


Transitional

by Viridian5



Series: Median [2]
Category: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, Character of Color, Drama, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-12-31
Updated: 2001-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:25:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The crew continues to deal with their changed circumstances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transitional

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "The Mathematics of Tears," "Harper 2.0," "Forced Perspective," and "It Makes a Lovely Light," then "Its Hour Come 'Round at Last" through "Into the Labyrinth."
> 
> Thanks to Kass, Shotboxer, and LaT for comments during the process. This story wouldn't be the same without you.

Harper fidgeted at the door while watching onscreen as the Maru flew into the docking bay. They were finally back. Finally, finally, finally.

"Harper," Rommie snapped with a look on her face that he'd been seeing there way too often lately. Being with Her Contemptuous Bitchitude alone for three weeks had been far from a joy.

She'd always been vaguely condescending to him, but recently she'd taken it into realms of immaturity even he found stunning. Relations between them had taken a major hit after he'd initialized that backup copy of her personality, with her approval. No matter how many times he told himself that what happened after that hadn't been his fault, that nobody could have foreseen it, that she would have said no if she'd expected anything dangerous to come of it, he still felt guilty enough about it that it left a crack in his armor of sarcasm. He wondered if it also pissed her off that he'd connected with Dylan in ways she wanted to but didn't dare to after having seen how insane a relationship with _her_ captain had left the Pax Magellanic.

Thing was, Rommie would have to grow up and be professional already. She was a warship, for crying out loud.

As the guy who kept her running and upgraded her and coddled her like the favorite child it looked like he wouldn't live long enough to have, Harper felt he deserved at least the illusion of respect from her.

Instead he said, "I know. Madame Ortiz is important and deserves some kind of pomp and circumstance. You're wearing the dress uniform to make sure I understand that. But, c'mon, you're excited that they're all back."

"I'll be pleased to be back to what passes for a full complement of crew in this time period."

Strangling an android would only hurt his hands, not the android. Harper had to remind himself of that.

But then she looked at him and said, "Thank you for the work you did these past few weeks. I know that it can't be easy to maintain and repair alone what a whole team of engineering staff used to take care of."

And that was why he still loved her. Well, aside from the facts that she was a pre-Fall artifact and an engineering marvel. "Well, thanks. I only needed a few dozen kegs of coffee and Sparky Cola to do it." Better to work than brood anyway.

"Maybe it would be better not to mention all the caffeine."

"Rommie, they're gonna take one look at me and know I was mainlining the stuff. I really hoped they'd call further in advance to let us know they were coming."

"Maybe they won't notice if you don't fidget so much." Still, she sounded gentler.

And she was right. He attempted to throw all that energy into his brain instead, trying to remember what it was on the Maru that he had to fix. Not the Maru itself, something in it. Something.... Sigh. Who was he kidding? He was too wired to think.

Too worried about Dylan too. After three weeks away, maybe Dylan had come to his senses. Harper intended to play it cool if that happened, try to avoid any unnecessary awkwardness. Yeah, right.

At least worrying about Dylan for a few weeks had given him less time to worry about the Magog spawn nestled in his guts. As far as cases of making lemonade out of lemons went, that was pretty damned sad, but Harper would take it.

"And please don't start flirting with Madame Ortiz," Rommie added. "You're not exactly subtle even when you're not hopped up on caffeine."

"Fine." Even as he fumed, he wondered if a pre-Harper Rommie would have used the term "hopped up." Deciding that she wouldn't have made him smirk to himself.

Once the docking bay resealed, Harper and Rommie walked in. Damn, but everybody looked banged up and filthy as they trailed out of the Maru. And Dylan...

Dylan was wearing black leather pants.

"He wore a matching thigh-length jacket with them planetside," Beka whispered into his ear as Rommie did the "honored to meet you, Madame Ortiz; we have a room ready for you" stuff.

"Rub it in," Harper muttered back.

Dylan briefly looked back as he did his welcoming captain routine, and the warmth in the look directed at him made Harper think that maybe Dylan was still senseless over him. Not that he'd get a real for sure on that until Dylan finished all the official stuff.

"You're the ship's AI?" the rather handsome, if also banged up, woman they'd brought back with them asked.

Rommie smiled. "I'm the ship's avatar. I can show you to your quarters."

"Could we do a tour first? I'm still a little too wired to settle down yet."

Dylan said, "We'd be happy to show you around."

Damn. Beka squeezed Harper's shoulder and whispered, "Don't worry about it."

As they started to walk out of the docking bay, Harper finally got a good look at Trance. "Trance! What happened--" Tyr's hand over his mouth interrupted him.

"Don't ask until I'm out of earshot," Tyr said.

Annoyed, Harper nipped at it until it moved away, then demanded, "And how long will that be?"

Trance's eyes look too bright. "My tail's gone. My beautiful tail. But it keeps itching, even though it's not there anymore."

Tyr growled and sped up. Looked like he'd been forced to hear a lot about it. It'd be funnier if Trance didn't look so mournful. Harper put his arm around her shoulder. "You're still my beautiful, sparkly girl. How'd it happen?"

"Now you're in for it," Beka murmured as she sped past them.

  


* * *

After he finished getting Trance cleaned up, talked out about her lost tail, and settled in a few hours later, Harper casually walked toward Dylan's quarters, heart pounding. Pathetic of him, but he hadn't been sleeping well lately, and fatigue always made him more emotional.

Dylan leaned against the wall near the door, looking like beat-up, dirty sex in his leather pants. Mmmm. "I was waiting for you," he said.

Double mmmm. "I guess the party can start now." He wanted to just pounce, but Dylan would probably want some reportage on how things had gone over the past few weeks. Harper could do that. He could do that even though, standing this close, he could smell Dylan. Down, boy. "Yesterday I got a message from Rev saying he's ready for a pick-up, so I started us heading in that direction. Repairs are done, and I troubleshot a few other things too. I plugged in and took some long walks through Andromeda's matrix to see if I could find any more surprises."

Dylan followed him through the door. "Did you?"

"Nope." He'd combed pretty thoroughly too. It gave him something to do during times when the serum made him queasy. Nausea didn't translate over to his virtual self.

Dylan tried to sound light and brisk but didn't quite nail it. "Did you have any... movement while I was gone?"

"Two times. Rommie hustled me to med-bay pretty quickly both times. Just the spawn doing calisthenics again."

Dylan put a hand under his chin and tilted his face up to look at him. Rough fingertips, gentle touch. "You haven't been sleeping well." Dylan stood so close....

"I've been busy. I'm fine." Harper shivered a little from Dylan's heat and scent. "Beka told me you had a leather jacket to go with the pants."

Dylan smiled darkly. "I do."

"Wanna see it."

"It has a hole in the sleeve."

Harper remembered winters when he had to wear three sweaters and a coat on top, all of them studded with holes. "You have a hole in your shirt sleeve too. You got shot, didn't you?"

"I'm fine. They bandaged me up immediately."

"You said you'd be careful."

"You said you wanted me to put the jacket on."

In a generous mood, glad to have Dylan back, Harper decided to let him get away with that. "Yeah."

Dylan stepped away and rummaged through the pack on his bed until he pulled the jacket out and put it on. Oh yeah. Thigh length and lustrous black, it looked soft and expensive, making Harper's fingers itch to touch it. It intensified the leather smell that Dylan exuded. When added to Dylan's scent and the scents of sweat and a bit of exotic grime, it made a potent cocktail.

He'd been professional long enough, right? Harper walked over and plastered himself to Dylan, pressing the side of his face into Dylan's chest, running his hands over the soft, sleek leather that covered Dylan's back. Immersed, he sighed happily as he felt arms enclose him and bring him closer. The lust was still there--on both sides, from the feel of Dylan's erection against him--but Harper had a deeper need to fulfill first. Safe. They were safe.

This close, Harper felt Dylan's words as much as heard them when Dylan asked, "Missed me?"

Harper made a rude noise in response and held on tighter.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"You better." But when he tried to nuzzle, he couldn't get to Dylan's nipple through the fabric of his shirt. "How much are you wearing?"

"I have a T-shirt on underneath."

"Curse you, Dylan."

"You're the one who wanted me to put the jacket back on."

"Just because I love real leather and like unwrapping my presents. The T-shirt thing is a nasty surprise."

"Doesn't have to be."

"Too late. You'll have to make it up to me."

Dylan seemed to have several different kinds of kisses in his repertoire. Right now he used something that had a lip brush, engage, tongue, draw back a little and brush, then breathe set of steps. Kind of like an Eskimo nose rub only with lips and a bit of tongue and with Dylan putting his hand at the back of Harper's head to cradle and direct. Playful. Harper gave it an A. They could do that for a while. He supplemented the kissing on his end by rocking and rubbing against Dylan.

It was good, but Harper had some other destinations on his itinerary too, so he slid down Dylan's body until he knelt on the floor, then rested his head against Dylan's leather-clad erection. Grinning at the needy sound Dylan made, he pushed his head against it like a cat and enjoyed the scent and feel of fine leather.

"You have to wear these pants again," Harper said.

"If I knew the kind of reaction you'd have, I would have worn them earlier."

Once Harper had the holster, pants, and underwear unfastened, he could smell Dylan too, which made his mouth water and his cock twitch. Wanted this so much. He licked the head of Dylan's hard cock and smiled at the shudders his actions produced. "I make you weak in the knees, Dylan?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I need to explore the situation more." He grabbed Dylan's hips to steady him, then licked the sides of Dylan's cock with broad, hard swipes, smiling at the way it quivered against his tongue. More of a Dylan taste than a soap taste right now, and he liked that.

"Harper." His voice sounded rough and throaty.

When Harper glanced up, he beamed at the dazed look in Dylan's eyes. "Yes?"

"How long are you going to tease me?"

Harper knew from the pulse in his own cock that he wouldn't be able to draw things out too much longer, but he said, "Oh, hours. Days, maybe."

Dylan growled in a way that let him know that he should get on with the show already. He wet his lips, then slowly slid his mouth down Dylan's cock, into this so much that it surprised him. Weird of him to find solid dependability, as embodied by one not-as-straight-laced-as-he-seemed High Guard captain, so sexy, but it seemed to do Things for him anyway.

Maybe it wasn't so surprising, really. Not considering the uncertainties of his condition.

His slow, leisurely sucking escalated to something faster, harder, and with the teasing edge of teeth in it. The sudden two-handed grip on his hair, which approached painful, told him he had it. Though the half-wild thrusts into his mouth and Dylan's groans helped him figure it out too. Harper looked up from under his lashes and watched Dylan watch him, which made him clutch Dylan's leather-clad hips tighter and sent a surge through his own cock. Good thing he wore baggy pants.

Moaning, Dylan thrust harder, hitting the back of Harper's throat, and lost it totally, while Harper took it all, even the loss of a few hairs from his stressed scalp, with a savage glee. He might find solid dependability sexy, but part of what made it sexy was the possibility of messing with it a bit.

Harper let Dylan's cock slide down his tongue, then kissed its head and licked the sharp taste off his lips, beaming. But if he didn't get some attention aside from getting his hair petted soon he'd explode. Since Dylan looked a little too fuzzy and dazed to be immediately on top of taking care of that, Harper stood, then jumped, aiming it so they'd fall backward onto the bed if Dylan couldn't take his weight, locking his legs around Dylan's waist and arms around his neck.

_Not_ knocking them down.

"Hi," Harper said, sounding hoarse, grinning a little at how his wiggling for balance against Dylan felt so good.

Dylan looked up at him for once, nonplussed. Amused too. "You're insane." The grime darkening his face in places gave him a more rakish look.

"Yeah. Why do you sound so surprised?"

"Have I ever told you that you have a really nice ass?" Dylan asked as he cupped and squeezed the body part in question with both hands.

"Nope. I think I'd remember that."

"I'm going to drop us now." Dylan turned around and backed up to the bed....

"No. Way. Dylan!" Yes way. But he smiled, matching Dylan, at the feeling of freefall, unlocked his legs and moved them out of the way, and shouted, "Timber!" It was a bit like riding a surfboard. A warm, muscular surfboard, but the basic principle remained the same.

Once they finished bouncing on the mattress, Dylan kissed him and started to unfasten his pants. Harper approved. Then Dylan said, "I want you to fuck me."

If Harper had been really egalitarian... and stupid, he might have wasted a moment feeling bad about that, because being raped and impregnated by the Magog had left him with a soul-deep terror of anything penetrating him, leaving him unable to reciprocate Dylan's offer. Being neither egalitarian nor stupid, he didn't give it a moment's thought. The haze of lust clouding his brain probably helped there.

Dylan wanted to be fucked. Dylan should get it. Simple.

Thus, instead of doing all that useless thinking, he concentrated on fishing a tube of lubricant from the nearby drawers and _not_ coming before he had the chance to slide into Dylan's sweet ass. Practicality.

"It amazes me that you knew exactly where that was," Dylan said.

"Uhm. I told you I'd be sleeping in here while you were gone." And he had slept here, at least until the first week stretched into a second week, and he got too depressed sleeping in this bed and being forcibly reminded that Dylan wasn't around.

"True." Dylan kicked off his boots, but Harper refused to let him do more.

Harper fondled the butter-soft leather of Dylan's pants as he removed them, then pulled away the underwear. Useless underwear right now. Remembering that Dylan had been wounded, Harper tried to be more careful while removing the jacket and two shirts. Being ticked off that Dylan had gotten wounded helped him keep from shooting off too soon. He also was genuinely pissed off.

"It's _fine_," Dylan said as Harper glared at the bandage. Perhaps Dylan understood that Harper needed more concrete reassurance, because he rolled them over and set about getting Harper as naked as he was. Unfortunately, he found a few ticklish spots along the way. "I'm not going to forget these."

"Bastard," Harper gasped. "You know, I can't hold on much longer."

"No?"

"Nope."

Dylan grabbed the tube, slicked his fingers up, and started to prepare himself in fast strokes while Harper tried to pick his jaw up to close his mouth. Dylan looked determined, lost, a bit desperate, and dead sexy, his eyes half closed, his whole body rocking on his fingers.

"Harper."

"Yeah?" Harper asked, his mouth dry, his brain barely working.

"Now. I'm ready."

"What about pro--"

"Nanobots take care of that."

Cool. Well, never let it be said that he was inconsiderate.

Harper fumbled the tube a bit--Dylan was not helping him, not by lying out with his legs spread, offering himself up--but managed to slick his cock thoroughly, since ripping his captain up would be a bad idea as well as hurtful to them both. He got himself lined up and looked at Dylan's face.

"C'mon," Dylan growled.

If that was how he wanted it.... Harper thrust in smoothly and sighed at how good it felt. Not as tight as some comments he and Beka had made about Dylan at the beginning of their association with him had suggested, but more than tight and hot enough. Since Dylan seemed to want it fast and hard and he didn't think he had the endurance right now for slow anyway, he started to really move, moaning at the friction around his cock and the feeling of Dylan's long legs brushing against him. Looking utterly debauched and into it, making marvelously needy sounds, Dylan thrust into his sweat-slick fist and pushed down onto his cock as he pushed up.

God, he was _fucking_ Dylan, and Dylan really, really wanted it.

Harper came, shouting, and did a little twist of his fist that brought Dylan over with him. He finally collapsed facedown on Dylan's chest, not a bad place to be.

"It's good to be home," Dylan said as he stroked Harper's hair.

"That's for sure."

  


* * *

Harper woke up warm and suffused with contentment, securely wrapped up in The Arms That Stomped Boston. Everybody was home, so he was home.

Dylan peppered the side of his neck with little, nibbling kisses. Oh yeah. "Breakfast?" Dylan asked.

"Sure, if it blows your skirt up. Keep on snacking on me like that."

"Not what I meant," Dylan answered, sounding deeply amused.

"Yeah, yeah. You can feed me. You can also love me and hug me, but if you call me 'George,' I'm outta here."

"Shower first."

Harper wiggled against him. "Together?"

"I don't know. That would be such a hardship."

"Hmph. It's a good thing I'm keeping another captain on the side."

"I wondered about you and Beka."

"Hey! I swear to you that Beka has never taken a shower with me. No matter how much I begged and whined and pleaded. But I hear that you got a little glimpse once, so you know what I'm talking about." Harper elbowed him.

Dylan coughed. "She was wearing a towel."

"Probably a really _small_ towel...."

"You mentioned taking a shower?"

"Smooth, Dylan."

"Now you're complaining about taking a shower?"

"Just making an observation."

He didn't have anything to complain about with the shower, not as he and Dylan stroked and kissed one another into a very good morning. He loved sex and he loved hot water, so putting the two together made him very happy. When you considered that he loved Dylan too, well.

Besides, getting to snap a towel at Dylan's ass on their way out was also fun.

They made breakfast without getting in one another's way too much. Soon they sat down together with eggs, toast, coffee, and even some kiwis.

"Are you going to eat that or keep petting it?" Dylan asked.

"I'm a tactile kind of guy. I like how the fuzz feels against my fingers." Harper hadn't fondled or even seen a kiwi in an age. He loved the way they tasted tart and sweet all at once.

"You're actually a lot like a kiwi."

"Fuzzy and kind of funny?"

"Those too."

Harper had to get that goofy grin off his face. He could feel it sitting there on his mouth. "How was the Maru?"

"Trance mentioned hearing a rattle."

Uh-oh. "Which Beka _did not_ let her touch, right?"

"Of course not. We all objected loudly."

"Good."

"We didn't get a chance to tend to it while we were planetside--"

He stirred more sugar in his coffee. For fortification. "So it's all mine? I'll get to it today."

"You do a lot of work for one person. I wish I had an engineering staff to give you."

Harper just about purred at the thought. Staff with brains exceeding what any of Rommie's work drones had, his to direct and command. Somebody else to do the scutwork for once while he paid attention to the big stuff.

Dylan laughed. "You looked orgasmic for a moment there."

"Keep talking dirty to me, Dylan."

"They could clean and replace the AP valves for you." Dylan caught on fast.

"Mmm."

"They could take care of routine repairs and maintenance on the Andromeda _and_ the Maru."

"How big is this staff?"

"Huge. It's a very well-endowed staff."

Harper snorted. "Will they satisfy my every need?"

"Oh yeah. They'll even satisfy the ones you didn't know you had."

"I have a lot of needs."

"They'll satisfy them all."

"Wow. You're so good to me, Dylan." Harper finally got his kiwi peeled and started to eat it, enjoying the soft, sweet flesh and tiny, crunchy, tart seeds. Processed food was convenient and all, but real fruit just had that something extra. The textures and complicated flavors made getting messy, sticky fingers more than worth it.

Besides, lots of fun stuff was messy and sticky.

Dylan had an interesting look on his face, so Harper asked, "What's up?"

Dylan's smile deepened. "Just thinking I should get more kiwis."

Harper could get used to mornings like this. Oh yeah.

  


* * *

On his way to the Maru, Harper passed Tyr, who started to walk with him. "Here to rain on my parade?" Harper asked.

"I only understand maybe half of what comes out of your mouth. I consider myself fortunate," Tyr purred. Tyr usually purred. Unless he declaimed.

"I assume you waited for me for a reason."

"Our meeting is mere chance."

"Don't bullshit a bullshitter."

"I'll keep that in mind. I would guess that you noticed the wound on Dylan's arm."

"Yeah. I thought I asked you to keep him out of trouble."

"He wanted to run off, wounded, into the enemy position and try to disable them himself. I dissuaded him and took the task for myself."

"I'll award you a merit badge. Thanks."

"Given the choice of sabotaging an enemy or trying to whip a whining rabble like the... people in that bar into fighting trim, I'd rather face the enemy."

"Don't worry. I won't accuse you of doing any other noble things."

"I'm relieved."

"Oh, get on with you. I have a rattle in the Maru that's screaming for attention."

"The little purple girl wanted to fix it with a hammer."

Harper shuddered. "Thanks for reminding me."

"You're welcome," Tyr purred, walking away with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

Harper understood now. Tyr had become a mercenary after his career as a comedian had crashed and burned. Now, embittered, Tyr meted out death and sadistic humor to the universe. "And I'm his audience of one, lucky me," Harper muttered to himself as he reached the Maru's entry ramp, but he had a smile on his face anyway.

  


* * *

Once he started on the rattle, Harper found a few other things that needed immediate attention on the Maru, though he still couldn't remember what he'd forgotten to do. He interrupted his work only when Andromeda picked Rev up so he could say hi and ask Rev how many heathens he'd converted. A full day, but nothing that would be interesting to someone who wasn't an engineer.

Harper grabbed a snack on his way to bed. While he spent a lot of time feeling almost normal, sometimes he became ravenously hungry out of nowhere. He didn't like it that he was eating for 14, nor did he want them to fatten him up as they waited to wake up for the Grand Opening all-you-can-eat buffet, so he tried to keep it under control. Which unfortunately meant that he had his moments of see-sawing between starving himself and bingeing. With the nausea the serum sometimes gave him and the ravening appetite the spawn sometimes gave him, no wonder Dylan thought he ate erratically. He did.

Ironically, _Beka_ wasn't worrying because she was used to his normal eating cycle being off the wall. She didn't see that his current behavior was an abnormal version of his normal appetite. He wasn't telling her either.

Thinking all these secretive thoughts led to him jumping when Dylan suddenly walked up on him in the hallway. "Dammit, Dylan, this is not the way I wanted to go out."

"Sorry." Dylan looked worried and almost excited all at once.

"Okay. We'll just go to your quarters so you can talk to me about whatever important thing's on your mind."

The excited worry or worried excitement turned rueful. "You're uncanny, Harper."

"Marvel at my mysterious ways." Once the door to Dylan's quarters closed behind them, Harper said, "Okay, lay it out for me."

Dylan sat down. "We have to go defend Mobius from a task force headed by a ship that has already destroyed one planet, killing two billion people and AIs. The force is expected to mobilize in about two weeks."

It stopped Harper cold. He stood there just staring at Dylan. "Wow. Breeze right past the foreplay, Dylan. A planet-killer?" Harper tried imagining what it would be like to own something that could knock out two billion sentient beings but even his fertile and at times murderous imagination failed to provide a picture. "Why us? Why do we 'have to'? Aside from the fact that you're Captain Dylan Hunt, savior of the universe. No offense intended." And why was he batting it out to Harper first?

"Mobius is a part of the Commonwealth now. They recently signed on."

"I'm sure they did, once they realized that they had a planet-killing ship heading in their general direction. Gee, isn't that convenient for them. 'Oh, sure we'll sign up to your Commonwealth, Captain Hunt, sir. There ya go. Oh, by the way, we have enemies threatening to blow our planet up, and since we're part of your coalition now, you have to defend us. Funny how that works.' What, Dylan?"

Dylan was smiling. "This is good. I'm getting a preview of what Beka's going to say when she finds out, so I can figure out a defense now. Forewarned is forearmed."

No, that wasn't why Dylan was running it past him first. Dylan had something on his mind. "Better not tell Beka you're picking my brain that way, or you'll never see me again. Wait a minute. Didn't the Mobies or whatever the hell they call themselves torture you back when? It happened while I was out there with Rev shopping for parts that time."

"That was the prior administration. And how did you know about that?"

"I talk to Trance a lot and managed to get her to indulge my curiosity about why you looked kind of beat up. They _tortured_ you, and we're saving their asses? Isn't that like begging them to slap your other cheek? I do not _get_ you, Dylan."

"Billions of people should die because a few of them interrogated me? They were under a dictatorship, Harper. I'm sure you understand what that's like."

Actually, knowing what it was like made him more emphatic, but no reason for Dylan to know that. "Okay, letting the whole planet be destroyed is going overboard, but I think you can agree that they tend to have an underhanded way of doing things."

"I can agree with that."

"So I'm not too keen on risking our asses to save theirs. We will, because you're a nobler guy than I am, but I'm not happy about it. Beka won't be either. Okay, so we're going against a ship that can kill planets armed with, what, a song in our pure, pure hearts?"

"You really don't read my mail." Dylan sounded pleased.

"Hunh? Dylan, if something comes in marked 'For Captain Hunt's eyes only,' I don't look at it. I have too much to do already without sneaking through your private correspondence." Harper wasn't sure if he was offended or not, so he decided to make sure he looked offended to cover his bases.

"A Machenite whistleblower is offering us the blueprints that'll help us find the Basilisk's weaknesses. It's a better offense than a song in our pure, pure hearts."

"What if it doesn't have any weaknesses?"

"Everything has weaknesses." Total certainty in that ironclad voice. "We have two weeks to work on it."

That total certainty, or the ability to simulate it, made Dylan a good captain, and Harper went with it. "Okay. Hooray for us. But I get the feeling that this whistleblower guy isn't going to make it as easy on us as he should."

"Why would you say that?"

"Bitter experience."

"He wants us to take him off-world and put him somewhere safe. Then he'll give us what we need."

Harper rolled his eyes. "Of course. Do you have a plan? You always have a plan."

"I do. I want to ask you if you're all right with your part in it before I announce it to everybody else." Dylan didn't have that total certainty going anymore.

Damn. Here you go. "Lay it on me."

"I need you to go down to the planet's surface to hack into their security net and cover the Maru's trail as we extract him."

"Nah, that's great. Much as I love Rommie," when she wasn't chafing his rear end, "I have been dying to get off the ship again. I've been going a little stir crazy." Aside from going out to Pierpont Drift during the caper to get the Hegemon's Heart, he hadn't left the Andromeda at all since the Magog had snatched him away to their Worldship and impregnated him. He didn't need to be treated like glass, and he could be trusted for away missions.

"Rev and Tyr will be with you in the Maru for most of the mission. Rommie will bring Mr. Kim to the Maru."

"Not a problem. Tyr's a pain, but I can deal. Rev's only annoying when he's going on and on about The Way. That parts mission I just mentioned? I wanted to shoot myself after a few days of Wayist philosophy. Doubt Tyr will let him do much of that, though." Harper smirked at the thought. "Rommie's been a bit snippy with me lately, but I can deal there too. Who gets ultimate control?"

"You do."

"Hunh?"

"I would prefer to get Mr. Kim out alive. If I left the matter to Tyr, I doubt that would happen."

Tyr would be thrilled, which made it all the sweeter. "All right. I'm good. Sign me up." Harper sat astride Dylan, facing him, enjoying the solid warmth of him. "Now we've gone from you leaving Andromeda without me to me leaving Andromeda without you. Is this some kind of conspiracy?"

"Necessity. Duty."

"Sucks," they both said at once, which made Harper laugh.

Harper leaned in to give Dylan a long kiss, rubbing against him. "And speaking of sucking...."

  


* * *

Harper wanted to kick that guy Kim's head in himself. Try to save a guy's ass, and he acts like such a puss about his safety that he puts all their lives in danger, turning a fairly simple snatch and evacuate into a cock-up, with Rommie out of contact and the Maru damaged and sinking into a trench in the bottom of the Machenite ocean with the pressure trying to press it flat. Thank you, Mr. Kim, you stupid asshole.

The spawn kept taking advantage of Harper's stress to play the xylophone on his ribs, proving all of Harper's assurances to Dylan wrong, dammit. Damn, it felt like they were awake and getting ready to rumble. He had to put some cables down to clutch his gut during a particularly sharp pain.

How many hits of serum had he already taken? Didn't matter: if the spawn turned active and ripped him open, they'd go for Rev and Tyr next. No choice. If he had to go, he'd rather take 13 parasites than Rev and Tyr out with him.

If you'd told him five years ago that he'd give a damn about the survival of a Magog and a Nietzschean, he would have called you crazy and quickly backed away.

Harper took another hit of the serum. Amazing how that horrible taste and acrid burn at the back of his nose and throat could become comforting over time, the taste and sting of survival.

Leaning on the railing, he heard Rev and Tyr talking about their chances of living through the Maru's descent. Didn't sound good, especially not for one merely human, unmodified Seamus Harper. Figured.

Then he felt too hot and dizzy, weak. And it _hurt_. Oh, f--

  


* * *

Harper woke up into brightness, feeling like shit, as if his insides had been pummeled and bathed in industrial-strength solvent. "Harper?" Beka asked. He may have felt like shit, but she looked like it.

Okay, the Pearly Gates, this wasn't. Med-bay. They were on the Andromeda.

"Hi," he croaked. He should sit up, but he didn't quite feel up to it.

"What were you thinking?" Dylan asked, sounding angry and hurt, near breaking. "You overdosed."

No wonder Beka looked like her stomach had dropped out, since she'd done her own Flash overdose not that long ago. "I didn't _try_ to overdose," Harper protested. "I'm sorry." Why couldn't the spawn hurt just _him_?

"You know you can only take it twice a day. What were you thinking?"

He had to make Dylan understand. "I was thinking that the spawn were active and about to rip their way out to kill me and get Rev and Tyr too. That's what I was thinking."

Beka looked torn and sick. She probably didn't feel like she had the right to say anything, not after what she'd put them through while on Flash.

Rev said, "Tyr volunteered to let you use the only working EVA suit. He willingly drowned to keep you safe. Fortunately, the hypothermia preserved him long enough to let me revive him."

The EVA suits. He finally remembered the thing he'd forgotten to fix. Damn. He hadn't thought he could feel worse. "We all got out?" Harper asked.

Beka said, "Kim was killed. But all of us are alive, and Rommie got the information, set the Machenites back a bit, and stole a swarm ship. The Andromeda destroyed the Basilisk, and Mobius is saved from complete destruction, though they face some ecological difficulties from the method we had to use to draw off the weapon's fire."

Not a total wash. And how did Rommie steal a swarm ship?

Trance added, "We had to pump the serum out of you. You'll feel better soon."

"The spawn?" Harper asked.

"They all survived. We put them back into dormancy, though."

Of course they'd survived.

Dylan looked worn out, almost old. Harper saw gray in his hair that he'd never noticed before. "I'm sorry, Dylan," Harper said. "I did what I thought was the best thing."

"Rev told me what the stress did to you. I shouldn't have sent you on an away mission." Dylan was blaming _himself_?

"You needed me to hack in. I couldn't do that unless I was down there. _I_ thought I could handle it."

"Harper. I... I have to go down to talk to--"

"The people you saved. I get that, if their planet's a mess."

"I could stay," Beka said, though she looked like a big part of her wanted to do anything but. God, the _guilt_ on her face.

Actually, he'd feel better with both of them away and not _looking_ at him anymore. "Nah, Dylan needs the backup more than I do."

Solemn, Beka nodded, then hugged him. Dylan had this look like he felt that the only way he could hold himself together would be if he didn't get too close. Tyr had been right about the mutual deathwishes and Harper's condition aggravating Dylan's. While Harper had no intention in hell of telling Tyr he was right, Tyr still deserved some thanks for drowning himself to save him. That couldn't have been easy.

Harper hated this. All of this.

  


* * *

He should thank Tyr for the rebuff on the thanks for saving his life. "It will never happen again," yeah. Harper had almost forgotten that Tyr was a Nietzschean. Okay, maybe he hadn't gone that far, but he'd started to get the idea that Tyr was a domesticated one, less dangerous to Harper than the in-the-wild version. Dumb, dumb, dumb. He'd needed to get his nose rubbed in the Way of Things, and Tyr had been right there to do it.

Tyr apparently figured it would be a waste for the ship's very useful engineer to off himself, but if they were in a situation where only one of them could come out of it alive, Tyr still came first. Making him the very model of a modern Nietzschean. You shouldn't ever expect the snake not to be a snake.

Harper turned on his side and tried to get comfortable, but his bed felt too lumpy or something. He couldn't even look at his lava lamp as a way to calm down, because the floating red blobs reminded him of less pleasant stuff. Add in the pain in his guts, the way he felt like his insides had been scoured, nausea, and the taste of what seemed like drain cleaner in his mouth, and therapeutic sleep as prescribed by Trance was not on the menu, no matter how worn out he felt.

You'd think that so much serum, enough to almost kill him, and then the purging process would have nailed the little bastards, but the spawn were just fine. Of course.

At least Dylan was too busy being down on the planet with Beka trying to help the folks deal with their new ecological devastation to be here looking angry and disappointed in him. That would have really hurt.

Okay. Sleep, not happening. He could still work. Harper put his boots and toolbelt on, then left his quarters.

Harper's fingers clenched as he walked around their newest prize, the Magog swarm ship. He couldn't wait to introduce his best friend, Mr. Laser Saw, to that puppy. Stripping it down to its secrets and using them against the Magog would be a pleasure.

But the Maru came first. Damn, it looked like a mess. Direct hits, pressure buckling on the hull, the forced cold water bath of its insides.... Beka must have been near tears seeing her home come back in this shape. Well, this Harper could fix, though it would be a job and then some.

Repair work induced a kind of calm, trance state. Harper let it wash over him as he thought only about the next thing that needed to be fixed, the next move. It let him just be, instead of chase his tail in a brood.

Eventually Tyr's voice broke the bubble of his "just being." "It was stupid of you to overdose. You put us all in greater danger."

Great. His stomach flip-flopped. "You're pissed that Rev whined at you until you risked your life to keep me safe. I get that. But overdosing wasn't stupid, since if I hadn't done it, you might be digesting in the guts of 13 newborn Magog right now."

"Your overdose was noble, then?"

"Practical, with noble side effects. Though I was really just hoping my body could take all that serum without hitting overload."

"I see. You realize that working like this is not what anyone meant when they told you to take care of yourself."

"This is 'taking care.' I felt better until you walked in. Look, you've succeeded in making me feel like shit again, so your work here is done. I still have a lot to do, so why don't you mosey on out of here?"

"I can't do that."

"Are you this big a pain in the ass naturally, or is it something you have to work at?"

"Both. Despite everything, you are a valuable member of this crew, and I will not let you destroy yourself."

"How are you gonna stop me?"

"I figured you'd ask that." Tyr grabbed him.

Harper fought hard. If his welder had been in his hand, he would have used it to kill, not caring about the consequences. But he didn't have it on him. He did get some punches and kicks in. However, being shaken around like this, like a rat in a terrier's teeth, made him dizzier than it should have, and his previous ordeal had already left him wrung out. And Tyr's bracer protected his wrist from all the shots Harper gave it to try to get him to let go. Harper just wore himself down more. Weirdly, this seemed nearly familiar, with him having this vague memory of being picked up and shaken as someone growled, "Wake up!"

At least he was too angry to get nauseous.

"Are you finished?" Tyr asked.

"No," Harper gasped.

Tyr threw him over his shoulders, pinning him there with both hands, and walked. "I'll thank you not to kick me."

"I'll thank you to put me down. All the blood's running to my head, and I have your shoulders pressing into places I'm really fucking attached to!"

"You had your chance to come peaceably."

"Rommie!" Harper shouted as they passed the android, who seemed to be wearing some kind of medal around her neck. Looking at her, he remembered all the potshots the locals had taken at her and made a note to himself that he had to check out and patch up Rommie too.

"You will not interfere," Tyr said.

"I don't even understand what's going on," she answered, her eyebrows raised.

"This is for his own good." Tyr opened the door to his quarters and walked them in, then dumped Harper on the bed.

Harper rolled, but as he hit the floor on his feet and started to move he saw a gun aimed at him. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Tyr had a small smile on his face. "You're going to sleep."

In Tyr's quarters. "Not in your bed, I'm not. And you're not gonna shoot me."

"I might. Or I could simply pistol-whip you."

They stared at one another. Annoyed but too worn out to make a decent run for it, Harper climbed back up onto Tyr's bed and very deliberately put his boots on Tyr's sheets as he sat there. "Happy?"

Tyr sat down nearby, his gun still trained on Harper. "No. I told you to sleep."

"You can't make somebody sleep."

"I'm staying right here to make sure you do."

Fuck. "You're going to be sitting on your ass for a while then."

"Perhaps."

"Bring it on."

As they stared at one another, the minutes crawled. Tyr had that Zen calm stillness thing down, his gun never wavered, but Harper had some tricks of his own. His eyes stared at Tyr, but much of his mind was working out his plan of attack for repairs: where to start and what he needed. If Tyr lowered his gun, Harper would be off the bed like a shot, but in the meantime he wouldn't be too bored or fidgety or intimidated by having a very large Nietzschean staring right at him. He'd used this trick before on other Nietzscheans. Drove 'em nuts when you stared back at them.

What a waste of time this was.

  


* * *

Harper woke up in an unfamiliar bed with something digging into his left thigh. Fuck, something on his toolbelt. He kept his eyes closed, feigning sleep, to buy himself time to get his bearings and figure things out.

He heard someone talking in the distance and listened in. "You might find it instructive, sir, that the first time you yell at him he figures it's over." Tyr.

"I'm still trying to figure out your interest in this, Tyr." Dylan.

Gah. He'd lost the staring match at some point and ended up sleeping in Tyr's bed. Just consider him the Goldilocks of the Andromeda Ascendant set.

Tyr's bed was definitely too hard.

"I'm very interested in the continued wellbeing of this crew."

"You want me to believe that you had Harper's wellbeing in mind when you threw him over your shoulders and toted him to your quarters."

"He's sleeping peacefully now. You can look if you'd like. It's better than how he was doing earlier. For some reason, he didn't seem to feel welcome in your quarters, so he went to his own. Soon afterward, he left his bed and spent eight hours working on the Eureka Maru. If I hadn't interrupted him, he might have continued longer."

Low blow about Dylan's quarters, one designed to hit Dylan where it hurt. Of course, that low blow wouldn't have been available for Tyr's arsenal if Harper _had_ gone to Dylan's quarters. But Harper hadn't, even if he hadn't meant it as a comment on anything. He just hadn't felt comfortable going there with everything going on while Dylan wasn't there. He hadn't moved in with Dylan or anything, and he liked having his own place he could sulk off to or keep his projects and machine parts lying around in. Besides, he never had a place that belonged only to him before, which made him reluctant to give his quarters up.

Dylan's looked too neat, too military, to actually live in if you were Seamus Zelazny Harper, human agent of chaos. If you were a particularly screwed-up feeling Seamus Zelazny Harper, all that order made all the inner turmoil seem so much worse, like maybe you weren't trying hard enough or just didn't belong there.

Had he really worked on the Maru for eight hours straight? And why the hell did Tyr know everywhere he'd been?

Dylan's low voice sounded almost like a growl. "Are you stalking Harper, Tyr?"

Yeah, what he said.

"Recent events have only underscored for me how valuable his skills are. No one else on this crew could do the work he does. That work is essential to the continuing operation of the vessels we use and thus to our survival. Unfortunately, he's reckless even in the best of the times, and recent difficulties have only worsened that urge. I'm coming to believe that he needs a keeper. Given his overdose, you could hardly disagree with me."

Disagree with him, Dylan.

"I don't agree with your methods."

Methods? Just the methods? What about the "needing a keeper" part? Because as much fun as the whole keeper thing might sound, Harper was sure it would suck in practice.

"He's awake." Damned Nietzschean hearing noticed the difference between awake breathing and asleep breathing. Tyr would have nailed him earlier if they'd been in the same room.

Harper blinked rapidly in the sudden light. Dylan looked so sad looking down at him where he was curled up on the bed. He wondered if Dylan understood why he'd dressed in all black after taking off the damned white medical 'jammies he woke up wearing in med-bay. Just like when he woke up in med-bay in the med-bay 'jammies to get the news about the hitchhikers in his guts. He hated them, all thin and white and sterile, harbingers of bad news that they always were.

"Hi," he told Dylan. He felt so _small_ right now. "I didn't mean to fall asleep here." And sounded to himself like he was about five years old. Shape up, Harper.

Dylan sat down next to him. "Where do you want to be?"

In a holodrama, he might've said that he wanted to be back home, a kid again, when things were simple. With his life, he was beyond relieved that he'd gotten out of childhood and away from "home" intact, so his idyllic home time would run somewhere through the past five years, any times post-Psycho Bobby, thank you. But all of that was impossible anyway, and he wasn't as big a drama queen as Tyr was, so he said, "I want to be with you." Selfish truth.

But it seemed to be the right answer. Dylan smiled a little and put a hand on his shoulder, clasping. "Well, I'm leaving this room. You're welcome to come with me."

"Cool." Harper noticed the annoyed look on Tyr's face, so he said, "I'll be sleeping soon. Besides, you guys woke me up talking." He wondered what the hell Tyr wanted from him. He wondered if Tyr even knew.

As he walked out with Dylan, Harper noticed Dylan and Tyr doing the stare at one another. This whole battle for dominance bullshit made him want to go off somewhere by himself and leave them to it. His life was literally too short to put up with being anybody's wishbone.

Once they reached the corridor he actually started to veer away from Dylan, but Dylan's hand closed around his wrist. "Harper, what's going on?" Dylan sounded part worried, part annoyed.

"I left the stove on in my room." Harper wrenched his hand away. "Look, I don't feel like being the trophy."

"It's not like that," Dylan said with that "you're being paranoid and silly" look on his face.

"If we're really together, I'm the one who gets your significant looks."

"My looks at Tyr aren't significant in the same way. You can trust me on that one."

Harper felt a pain in his side so sharp that it made his eyes water, and his hand automatically moved to cover the area, not that that ever helped. Taking in a deep breath, trying to cover, he said, "I should hope not. Besides, I don't think Tyr swings that way. I _know_ it's not the same, but it sure as hell looks like whatever you got going with him is much stronger than--" He felt like something was trying to push its way up his throat. Oh, fuck. Next thing he knew, Dylan had him sitting on the floor against the wall with his head against Dylan's shoulder.

Dylan sounded breathless. "Rommie's sending some drones--"

God, Dylan's horror just amped up the usual panic, making it feel worse. "No, no. I get this sometimes, Dylan. I'll lie down or throw up and be fine. It's just all the serum, okay? I'll be fine. You chill, I'll chill, it's all good."

"It's not good!"

"Chill, chill, chill...." Closing his eyes, curling up and rocking a little, Harper tried to calm himself by slowing his breathing, breathing through the pain and the feeling that his stomach wanted to fly out of his mouth. This felt like the serum, not the spawn, at work, so it wasn't really so bad. "It's just the serum, Dylan. Not the Magog. I get this. Just give me a moment...." Breathe. Nothing lasted forever, not nausea, not pain. Calm. You get through by getting through, not thinking about it.

Dylan held him. That helped.

It eventually quieted down to garden-variety nausea. "See? Better now," Harper said as he opened his eyes.

Dylan looked ten years older. "That was the serum?"

That whole "Tyr being right about the effect Harper's problem might have on Dylan" thing? Harper just remembered it. "Medications have side effects."

"Not like that. Not that bad."

"Maybe your Golden Age of the Commonwealth ones didn't." Hey, kids, watch Harper get slowly killed by Magog spawn and take his captain out with him! This was bad. The more Dylan found out, the worse it got, and Harper felt way too tired to talk the proper circles around him.

"Has the serum been doing this all along?"

"Not this bad and not all the time. It's okay. With my dodgy immune system, I'm used to this kind of shit from way back. I get sick, I suffer through it and the cure, and eventually I get better." Actually, in this particular case it didn't look like he'd get better, but he didn't have to bring that up every five minutes. "I just overdosed. I'm not going to bounce right back."

"Do you need any help?" Tyr purred as he looked down at them. Guy had perfect timing, as always.

"Considering the fact that neither of you will be carrying me anywhere, no," Harper answered as he carefully stood up. Happily, his stomach survived the movement. He could do this. "'Bye, all. I think I'll go get my Trance-mandated rest now."

He turned his back to them and started to walk, listening carefully for sounds of pursuit. That door closing might be Tyr returning to his quarters. Silence followed, then he heard someone walking up to him.

"Harper."

"Yeah, Dylan?"

"I'd like to go somewhere private to talk," Dylan said quietly. "If you don't mind. I know you're tired."

"Somewhere we don't have to worry about a certain somebody coming up and getting involved? I get that." Harper knew he had to break it off with Dylan. Knew it. No time like the present, and privacy would be best. "Yeah, okay. Let's talk somewhere."

"My quarters are closer."

_That_ could be a really bad idea, especially with how tired Harper felt. Dylan's bed was too soft. "I'm not happy, Dylan."

To Harper's surprise, Dylan understood what he meant. "I don't have any ulterior motives." When Harper gave him a disgusted look, Dylan said, "All right. I do, but I am sorry and it is closer. And you don't look well."

"I don't feel well, and I'm not in the mood for games."

"No games."

"All right. Your place."

They walked there in silence, Harper's heart dropping lower and lower. Why did the noble stuff have to be so damned hard? Okay, he understood that everybody would be noble if it were easy, but still.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Dylan swept him up in a hug. Whoa! Hey!

Felt good, though.

"It's been a rough few days," Dylan murmured.

Harper couldn't help burrowing his face into Dylan's uniform jacket. "Yeah, you could say that."

"I hated having to abandon the Maru."

"But you had the billions of people in danger on Mobius. I get that."

"I was so certain I'd lost all of you. When Rommie came in with the swarm ship and the Maru, it felt like a reprieve."

"Until you saw Tyr freshly back from the dead and me in a coma." Harper closed his eyes as Dylan stroked his hair in response. "You did what you had to do. It was a command decision."

"Overdosing yourself isn't the same thing."

"In my case it was. Needs of the deserving many versus the needs of the undeserving many in my gut. It wasn't my imagination; they _were_ active."

"Yeah."

It was time. Harper took a deep breath and pulled out of the hug, stepping back and taking a good look at Dylan. Those new gray streaks in Dylan's brown hair killed him. While they'd all made old man jokes about Dylan, so much of that graying had to be from stress. He sure had enough: coming to 300 years later and finding out that everything you loved and knew was dead, discovering that billions of Magog flew toward occupied space on a mission of destruction, trying to convince people who didn't understand the danger that they had to band together to protect their own lives, and working with a crewmember who was living under a death sentence from the things currently living in his gut. Being Dylan Hunt meant feeling personally responsible for all of that, crazy as it might be.

Harper couldn't add to that stress. Sometimes he could feel how close Dylan was to snapping.... "Dylan, I can't keep doing this to you."

"Overdosing? I agree." The look on Dylan's face suggested a willful refusal to understand.

"No. Look, this isn't going to get easier. I might die." He probably would. "It'll be bad enough for you losing your engineer."

"Harper, it'll be bad no matter what you are to me."

"It doesn't have to be worse."

"It's too late for that. I'm already far too attached to you. And there's no need for you to deal with the spawn alone."

Harper fought down that treacherous warm feeling. He would be strong and noble here, even if Dylan kept saying all the things he wanted to hear. "It's bad enough that I have to deal with it, and I'm not dealing with it very well. I admit it. I don't think anybody else is gonna deal with it any better than I am." He sure hadn't seen them dealing with it well the few times he'd brought it up. Well, Tyr had been better about it than everybody else, but Tyr had been this close to dealing with it personally himself. "You have enough on your plate. You're captain, you're the guy trying to reestablish the Commonwealth to save everybody--"

"You're the guy who's keeping us in operation."

"I _have_ to deal, because they're in my body."

Dylan must have been slowly approaching the whole time, because he suddenly stood right in front of Harper. "Did you ever think that being involved with you might be good for me?"

"Frankly? No. Though you seem to enjoy the sex, at least--"

Dylan looked really, really pissed off. "The sex is great, but I'm talking about the company and banter at breakfast and in bed. You're my plush something, remember? Or are you saying that none of that means anything to you?"

"Oh, fuck off, Dylan," Harper answered, as frustration took over his mouth. "It means a lot to me. It means so much to me that I want to put an end to it so I don't go to my grave certain that I _broke_ you, all right?"

"You have a high opinion of yourself."

No, what he had was a headache. "You didn't have to see your face in the hallway. I did. That didn't look like anything 'good' to me. Well, if you stick with me I'm gonna keep on scaring you. And Tyr is gonna keep trying to score points off you through me, which seems to make you feel like you have to score points off him through me right back, all of which pisses me off. To his thinking, I'm a big weak spot for you."

"In Tyr's room, you said you wanted to be with me," Dylan said quietly, his face still.

"I was being selfish and thoughtless, okay?"

Then Dylan cheated by putting his hand on Harper's shoulder. Why did he have to be so... Dylan? "Then I want to encourage more of that."

Harper snorted. "More selfishness and thoughtlessness from me? That's really opening Pandora's Box. But I'll keep it in mind." Then Harper found himself in a hug again. "Smothering me _might_ stop me from saying anything else."

Harper felt Dylan's sigh. "Harper, could you just shut up? I was worried to death about you, and now I want to enjoy the fact that you're still alive, even though at this moment I have no idea why the hell I wanted you to stay that way."

Well.

Dylan continued, "Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment behind wanting to protect me from myself and you, but I'm not letting you make any noble sacrifices. You want to be with me, and I want you to be with me, so I see no reason why we shouldn't stay together. I'll deal with your problems, and I'll help you deal."

"It's never that easy," Harper murmured into Dylan's uniform jacket. He really shouldn't have been leaning on Dylan like this, but his legs felt too droopy. Considering what he'd been through, he shouldn't expect better, but it still sucked.

"We've all beat the odds before."

Suddenly Harper was sitting on the bed with Dylan crouching in front of him. Handily maneuvered.

"You can be manipulative as all hell, you know?" Harper said, part amused, part annoyed.

"I know, but this is too important not to be."

"I admire it. When it's directed at someone else."

"I love you. Will you shut up and let me?"

Accepting inevitability, Harper leaned forward until his forehead rested against Dylan's. "With sweet-talking like that, how could I not? I love you too." Since Dylan refused to be saved, Harper would have to give it more thought.

"I know."

"If I wasn't so tired, you'd be getting the bitchslapping of your life right now."

"I guess I'm fortunate. Now, seeing as how you're so tired, I'm going to undress you for bed."

"Hubba hubba." Harper sighed. "Okay, it's not undressing for fun, not with how wrung out I am. You know that, right?"

Dylan picked up the serum nebulizer where it hung on a cord around Harper's neck and put it on the table. "I suspected."

Still, he liked being undressed, being cared for. "Which means that I've changed from being your plush animal to being your doll."

"Would you think less of me if I said I've always wanted one?" Dylan asked with a smirk as he pulled Harper's shirt off.

Harper knew that his hair must have really gone haywire from the look on Dylan's face now, so he said, "I can't hang with a wuss like you. Dolls. Really."

"Says the guy who's being undressed like a doll."

"That's just beautiful. Just go ahead and destroy my moral authority. You live for that, I'm sure."

"Mmm-hmm." Dylan put Harper's 'jammie top on him, buttoned it, then gently pushed him down on the bed. "Lift your hips."

"Oooh, Dylan." Harper stared at the ceiling with a smile on his face, then closed his eyes and enjoyed the light, certain feel of Dylan's hands on him, unfastening things, moving him around, and putting the bottoms on. It made his skin tingle and felt so good that, wrung out as he was, he still went half-hard.

Dylan climbed onto the bed and settled in next to him, then kissed him. "Done," Dylan said.

"Do you think you could take everything off and put it back on again?" Harper murmured sleepily, then faded out.

  


* * *

Dylan rocked with him, cock deep inside him, filling him. Harper moaned and bucked and begged for more, harder. Dylan's fingers on his hips seemed to harden, become sharper, and Dylan's voice turned deeper, almost guttural. Harper heard a droning chant, then the next thrust ripped him in half--

Harper woke with his teeth clenched in Dylan's pillowcase, hyperventilating. When he broke free of Dylan's arms, Dylan made some sounds of protest. "Be right back," Harper whispered in an unsteady voice that would have engaged an awake Dylan's suspicions. Asleep, he just rolled over.

Trembling, Harper peeled off his sticky pants and padded into the bathroom wearing only his 'jammie top. Washing up, he just about scoured at his flesh, ending with a wake-up! splash of cold water on his too-pale face. He stared back at himself and scowled at the purple-black shadows on the delicate skin under his eyes.

Not a single scar remained from the attack that had infested him, not even a mark from where that Magog had bitten into his cheek. His chest and belly looked normal, though his belly was a little bit bigger, but the bigger belly could just be prosperity. He put his hands on it and felt nothing that didn't belong to him.

Then his stomach rumbled loudly, the final humiliation. "Fuck you, you're not getting anything," he said to his spawn. It didn't matter how famished he suddenly felt. "Feed a fever, starve a larvae."

He opened the door to the bathroom and peered out. Dylan sounded distraught as he tossed and turned, lost in a nightmare. His chest hurting at the sound of it, Harper walked out and hoped he could make things better. Still damp and wearing only his top, even if it did feel weird having his ass and his cock hanging out a little, he slid back under the blankets. Dylan must have picked him up and covered him earlier. Harper settled himself within Dylan's arms again and concentrated on slowing his heart rate. It became easier when The Arms That Stomped Boston took him in and snuggled him closer. Dylan relaxed, and Harper relaxed with him, burrowing into his warmth, scent, and firm body.

  


* * *

Harper woke up alone. "Dylan?" Then he looked at the chron. "Oh, shit!"

Why did Dylan let him sleep this late? _How_ did Dylan let him sleep?

Harper did serum, shower, clothing, and breakfast as fast as he could, then raced out the door. "Rommie, where's Dylan?" he called out.

"The bridge."

"Thanks."

He shouldn't be angry. Dylan probably had meant nothing but the best. That was Dylan: Best Intentions Guy. But... damn.

The doors opened on what seemed to be a peacetime bridge, so Harper figured he could steal Dylan for a few minutes. He vaulted over a railing to stand next to him and asked, "Can I see you alone for a little bit?"

Dylan looked a bit startled, but said, "Sure. Beka--"

"I'm on it," she answered.

Dylan followed him into the corridors. "What's this about?"

Harper tried not to make it sound like an accusation. "You shouldn't have let me sleep." That wasn't bad: it sounded pretty casual, a "note for next time" thing.

"I got out of bed, showered, ate, and left without managing to wake you up. Considering that, I think you needed the sleep."

Not good. Really not good. "Plenty of mornings I didn't feel like getting up--before the spawn too--but I did it anyway."

"You recently overdosed and nearly died."

It all sounded logical, but this wasn't about logic. "I can pull my own weight, Dylan. I can."

"I never said you weren't. You work hard."

"If I don't fix Andromeda and the Maru, who will?"

"You spent eight hours on the Maru yesterday."

"And barely scratched the surface of the repairs it needs!" He had to lower his voice and regain his cool. Calm down. "It was really nice of you to let me sleep, but right now sleep's the last thing I need." He could sleep when he was dead.

"Harper, I'm not going to dump you off the ship for not being useful," Dylan said quietly.

Harper's heart skipped. "I never said you would."

"In the future, short of medical orders from Trance, I won't make the decision of sleeping later for you. Will that be all right?" Dylan didn't make it sound snotty at all, to Harper's relief.

"Yeah. That's good. Thanks." Harper so wanted to give him a kiss, but they didn't do that kind of thing while on duty. "See you later."

  


* * *

It was a damned good thing that he and Beka kept the Maru's internal workings so carefully wrapped, covered, and shielded, because otherwise they'd be replacing everything now. The ocean water that had flooded the ship had been highly saline.

With the hatch open, Harper could hear someone stumble through the obstacle course of drying furnishings that cluttered the docking bay. They might have to replace some of that stuff. The dartboard had come through okay, though.

When Beka walked in, Harper said, "Hey, boss. I'm sorry about what happened with the Maru."

She had her serious face on. "It's okay. Rommie told us that your undetectable hack was detected and traced by a very powerful AI, which was the last thing any of us would have expected. You guys did the best you could with the situation." She fidgeted. "Dylan told me that you're afraid you'll get dumped off the ship if you're not useful."

Thanks, Dylan. "I never said that. I just wanted him to know that I can still pull my weight."

Beka took in a deep breath. "I used to play on that."

Oh, fuck. "A long time ago."

"I used it to yank you around again while I was on Flash."

It still hurt to remember how quickly she'd brought out the threat of dumping him back on Earth, as if it had already been close to the top of her mind.... "You were on Flash!" She hadn't been herself, not by a long shot. "Beka, it's fine. It's an old, old instinct of mine, starting from childhood. I'm not going to--"

"--work yourself to death trying to prove something? He told me that one of the first things you did after being released from med-bay was go work on the Maru until Tyr literally dragged you away."

"Work's my..." Drug? Not a good word to use around Beka, not even as a joke. "...therapy. I come from hard-working, hard-headed New England stock. It's in my genes."

"I'll buy the 'hard-headed' bit." She smiled a little. "I'll be keeping my eye on you, Seamus."

He appreciated the concern, unnecessary as it may be. "I always keep my eye on you, boss. Rowrrr."

  


* * *

Beka and the Maru hadn't come back, and she was never late. The relief ship she'd gone to rescue had come back, but she hadn't. Not yet. Please let it be "not yet." The thought of her being dead.... Harper couldn't think it. Wouldn't think it.

If Andromeda left its current position and Beka was alive but in a disabled Maru, she might never find them. She might die needing help.

She couldn't already be dead.

"We don't know that anything's happened to her," Rommie said.

"Yeah, and if we press on we may never find out," he answered.

"Harper, you don't have to justify your decisions to me. If you say we wait, we wait." Said in a tone meant to prompt him to rethink his actions. Rommie had known him long enough to have some insights on how to press his buttons.

He sighed. "95% casualties."

"31 million dead," Rommie agreed.

It had to make him a bad person that when he weighed the lives of 31 million people dying of a lethal disease against Beka's life, he saw the scales as being close to balanced. No, actually they swung more towards Beka's side.

She'd saved his life. Saved it so many times, but the first and most important time had been nearly five years ago. He owed her everything.

But in her absence and Dylan's absence he was captain right now, even though he hadn't wanted to be. In charge. He was responsible for more than just himself.

If he told Andromeda and the convoy of relief ships to keep waiting, they would wait.

And people would die, and it would be his fault.

He wished Dylan were here making this decision instead. Because Harper knew what he had to do, what even Beka would want him to do. He had to tell Rommie to give the message to the convoy that they were moving on and Beka would have to catch up if... _when_ she could.

"All right, fine. Broadcast to the convoy, we're getting underway." It felt like he'd swallowed a big stone. "Best speed to the next transit point."

"Aye," Rommie answered, and it sounded like the most final "aye" he'd ever heard.

  


* * *

And the Nietzscheans had been waiting for them. It looked like most of the Drago-Kazov fleet had been mustered as a welcome party. Ambush all the way, with them probably waiting to strike until after they drew Beka off first. If they'd killed her.... They'd probably even started that outbreak, put 31 million innocents in danger, somehow. Bastards.

Another volley of shots rocked the bridge. Dammit. He didn't have the training for this.

As Rommie kept reminding him. It would be nice if the AI worked on helping them get out of this with their asses in one piece instead of rolling her eyes and uselessly harping on how he wasn't Dylan, because, duh, he knew that, and complaining wasn't going to turn him into Dylan either.

"Harper, the convoy," Trance said.

Yeah, one High Guard warship defending a completely unarmed convoy against the Drago-Kazov's worst. No wonder they were getting knocked around so badly. "Rommie, keep firing. We have to take out those cruisers."

"No," Rommie snapped, "we have to protect those relief ships. Use defensive missiles to cover their transit."

"And get killed. No freaking way! We can't protect squat if we're dead, Rommie."

"We're dead either way. This is bigger than us, Harper."

"I'm not losing to those self-appointed, superior lifeform freaks--"

"Then listen to Rommie," Trance snapped. "The Drago-Kazov only win if they can stop the convoy. If we can protect that convoy then the Drago-Kazov lose. Even if they destroy us, you'll have beaten them, you, Harper, a pure unmodified human."

"Kludge." How easy did she think he was to manipulate? By Trance standards, that had been amateur work. But he did have to review his priorities. 95% casualties from the disease if left untreated. Besides, if the convoy got taken out, leaving Beka behind had been for nothing. "Yeah, well kludge this. Switch to defensive missiles, cover the convoy. Whatever it takes."

Big grin on Trance's face, steely satisfaction on Rommie's. Momma told him there'd be days like today. He hoped Dylan was having better luck taking over the base. They could use all the help he could give.

The Drago-jerkoff fleet kept ripping into them, and it looked like they'd end up doing a kamikaze thing, but he felt weirdly calm. Clear. The spawn slept peacefully on as he made the orders that would blow the whole ship to hell. He winced a little every time a direct hit knocked something else out on the Andromeda, but it wasn't like he'd be around to have to fix anything afterward. Not like the Andromeda Ascendant would be around either.

He wished he could have said goodbye to Beka and Dylan. If he and Dylan even ended up in the same afterlife, he'd have to apologize to Dylan for taking the ship out with him. Hey, maybe dying to save a relief convoy of priests and volunteers out to cure millions would win him some brownie points with the Guy Upstairs as well as his captain.

Hopefully, Dylan showing up in the Great Beyond would be many, many years in the future.

Finally Rommie said, "Nietzschean space base missile batteries are powering up. They'll be ready to fire at any second."

He was almost afraid to ask. "How are we doing, Rommie?"

"Defensive systems are compromised, and slipstream is offline. We're not going to make it."

About what he'd figured. "The convoy?"

"It's through," Trance said.

He whooped, taking his victories where he could get 'em. If he had to go out Viking funeral style with a whatever-the-hell Trance was who thought he was the dumbest, easiest to manipulate guy in the whole system and an AI who blamed him for not being Dylan and for getting them killed, so be it. "All right, that still means we won, you Uber bastards. All right, on my mark, attack pattern Last Act of Freakin' Defiance."

"Harper, wait," Rommie said.

Harper watched the cruisers start to blip off the radar, blown to smithereens. Dylan had made it through for them, sicking the Nietzscheans' own missiles on 'em. Sweet. Harper still couldn't believe that he got this last-minute stay of execution, but he sure could ram this down the Nietzscheans' throats now that the Uber bastards were cut apart and taken by surprise. He started to smile.

  


* * *

The battle over, the Maru returned, thank God, Harper went bounding down the hallway toward Beka. She looked banged-up and tired but very much alive. Beautiful, she looked beautiful. Although he wanted to hug her and kiss her and run his hands all over her to make sure she really was in one piece, he put on the lightest voice he could manage to say, "Glad to see you, boss. I was worried about you." Yeah, out of his mind with worry.

"Yeah, so was I." Beka sounded wan and lost in thought. Not in good thoughts either.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"Not really." Still distracted, still so sad.

"You want me to leave?" Anything she needed. Anything.

"No, no." She wrapped her arm around his neck, open invitation, so he put his arm around her. "Stay," she said, bringing him in close, giving him a fond look, so he leaned his head against the side of her neck, turning in to her warmth.

Anything she needed.

What she needed involved going back to the Maru. Some people would want to avoid the scene of the crime, whatever the crime was, but the Eureka Maru was home to Beka and more important to her than any few bad events or her junkie father's slow decline into death onboard. Beka carried her home with her everywhere as much as it carried her. Harper had a sudden image of her as a turtle that nearly killed him.

She tightened her arm around his neck teasingly. "What?"

"Just thinking that your repairs look pretty clean given the limited amount of time you must have had."

"Get your nose out of my ass, Seamus."

"My nose would be _blessed_ to be in your ass, boss. My nose _wishes_\--"

She shook him gently. "Enough."

As he whipped her ass at darts, she started to talk. As he'd guessed when she'd asked him to stay with her, she did want to talk. She just didn't want to want to talk. "After I rescued the ship-- I did rescue it, right?"

"Yeah, it caught up with us," Harper said.

"Good, good. It was just me and this female Nietzschean fighter jock. It surprised me too, but it seems that the Drago-Kazov don't kill the defective kids. They use them. She was sterile, so she was cannon fodder."

"How do you know this?"

"She talked to me. She talked to me the whole time we were repairing our ships." Beka let her dart go with a particularly vicious throw. It missed the bulls-eye but sunk deep into the board. "I'm going soft-headed in my old age. She was about to kill me, but I'd tricked her and nailed her instead. All she did was frigging talk to me and tell me her name, so why do I feel so bad about killing her Uber ass? She was part of a welcome party of fighters to destroy an unarmed relief ship full of priests and medical volunteers."

"She did the mind whammy on you, boss. She talked and almost seemed like a human being."

Beka smirked. "Yeah, the old mind whammy. How'd you do, Captain Harper?"

"It was a cakewalk. I only had to face the entire Drago-Kazov fleet by myself, completely outnumbered, and come this close to telling Rommie to initiate attack plan Last Act of Freakin' Defiance before Dylan took control of the base and evened the odds. You know, I never wanted to be captain. Now I know why."

"But you got the whole convoy through okay."

"Nearly losing the Andromeda Ascendant, my life, and Trance's life in the process, but yeah." Harper took a sideways look at her, alive and well. "I stayed as long as I could. I waited. I didn't want to leave you out there."

"31 million people in jeopardy."

"Yeah. 31 million people or you."

She ruffled his hair. "You did the right thing. Though I have to say that the purely selfish part of me gets a warm fuzzy feeling over you sticking around for a while."

"It was an ambush. It looks like the Drago-Kazov set up the whole thing, even the outbreak, to get us out here."

"Yeah, I figured. But why?"

"Maybe Dylan will let us know."

"Maybe." She slapped his back so hard his shot went astray. "Ooops."

Harper gave her a dirty, if fond, look. "Cheaters never prosper."

"I think we've done pretty well for ourselves."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Now that I've unburdened myself, I'm gonna whip your ass."

"My ass only _wishes_\--"

"Seamus."

  


* * *

Harper snuggled against somebody and nuzzled warm, bare skin. The skin tasted different but still familiar. Different scent too, though also familiar. The body next to him felt softer in spots but still comforting.... But somebody was standing over him, he could feel it.

"And here I thought I was special," Dylan said, though he sounded amused.

Harper turned his head toward Dylan's voice, which wasn't coming from next to him, and cracked his eyes open to see something blurry that might be a part of a High Guard uniform. "Hi," Harper croaked. "I'm in my bunk with Beka, right? On the Maru?"

"Oh, yes."

Yep. After blinking his eyes clear, he saw Beka sleeping peacefully on top of his arm, her face turned into his chest. Wow, he'd even taken the braid extension out of her hair before they crashed. Harper was impressed with himself.

"She had a rough time," Harper said. "And before I kicked her ass over the course of several games, she really had a rough time."

"I hear you didn't have an easy time of it either, Captain Harper."

Dylan was going to kill him. He knew it. "I suck, okay? I am not captain material."

"Considering the situation you were in as well as your lack of training and experience, I'd say you did pretty well for a first-timer."

"You're not just saying that because we sleep together?"

"No, Harper."

"Okay." Harper yawned, feeling his jaw joints almost crackle from how wide his mouth opened in the process. "What can I do for you?"

"You can go back to bed here until after Beka wakes up. If that's all right with you."

"Is that all? I can do that. See, you make a much better captain than I do."

Dylan put his hand on Harper's head and gently pressed it back into the pillow. Harper smiled as Dylan pulled the covers up over them. "G'night, Dylan."

"Good night, Harper." Dylan ruffled his hair, and Harper slid into a soft, cozy sleep.

Harper woke up with someone's hand on his ass. Oh, baby. _Good_ morning. But then it moved away and Beka started to chuckle. "Tell me we didn't," she said as she lifted her head off his chest. Her hair had rumpled wildly.

"Sorry, Beka. I beat you at darts several times, so you had to pay up. We stripped down and then made sweet love several times--you screamed my name twice, I remember--then I put our clothes back on exactly as they were before and put us to bed, at which point we slept for two hours. It was the best ten hours of my life."

"Seamus, if you could carry on for eight hours...."

"What? What? You'd take me on?"

She softly thwapped his head. "It's a good thing you have such a good fantasy life."

"I have my two captains. I don't need a fantasy life. Besides... your hand was most definitely on my ass when I woke up."

"You sure it wasn't your hand on your own ass?"

"With the angle it had? If I were that limber maybe you'd take me on. That was your hand."

"Nope."

"I think I feel violated and taken advantage of."

Beka untangled herself and got up, then kissed his forehead. "You are cute sometimes."

As he watched her bend over to pick up her boots and holsters, he murmured, "It's my blessing, it's my curse."

"Where's my braid?"

  


* * *

The chron told him that he'd lost most of a day along with a night, so he quickly showered and threw some new clothes on, then got to work on the Andromeda's battle damage. Lost most of a day, but what a way to lose it. Beka looked so much better when she left. And cozying up to her in bed did wonders for him too.

Eventually his shift ended, and even despite all the extra time he'd slept in with Beka he felt tired enough to go to bed. Maybe the stress from going head to head in a deathmatch with the Drago-Kazov fleet had just taken its time to catch up with him.

Harper stopped outside Dylan's door and pondered. Dylan had seemed okay about the near-kamikaze thing earlier, but maybe he just didn't feel like getting into it with someone who was half-unconscious. Still, he deserved an apology. Harper buzzed the door.

The door opened, and an arm grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in. He squeaked in surprise, then squeaked again as he was pinned to the wall by a suddenly kneeling Dylan. Dylan unbuckled his toolbelt and unfastened his pants with a series of loud sounds, pulled them aside, opened up his underwear, and. Latched on.

Hard instantly, Harper whimpered at the wet heat and suction enveloping his cock. He couldn't feel his knees, and his hands scrabbled against the wall to avoid going to Dylan's hair and plucking it all out. He'd had problems before with the thought of Dylan's face being right near his occupied belly but right now he didn't have a thought in his head, not with Captain Hunt on his knees, in uniform, head bobbing, cheeks sucked in, lips pursed around his cock, giving him the blowjob of his life.

Harper exploded, shouting Dylan's name, and slumped down the wall to land on his ass the moment Dylan stopped sucking and released him. "Oh."

Dylan licked his slick, slightly swollen lips and kissed Harper. "Hi."

"Oh."

"I have to mark this day down. I rendered you speechless for about half a minute."

"I... I'm sorry," Harper gasped, and he sounded dazed even to himself. "I was going to apologize for almost getting your ship blown to hell, but I seem to have wandered into a porn holo or bumped my head really hard instead."

"I worried about you."

"Let's hear it for worrying, then. You're really--" Frisky? Aggressive? Take-charge? Un-fucking-believable? Strange? Out of character? "--chipper today. What's up?" Not that he had any problems with Dylan grabbing him and blowing him to within an inch of his life.

"I got some answers to some questions and assured Tyr's loyalties."

"No way. Tyr? Impossible."

Dylan smiled darkly. Harper felt a pang of fear and a stirring in his groin all at once. "Way," Dylan said.

"I'll take your word on that. I guess you found out what the Drago-Kazov did."

"They released that plague, endangering millions of lives, to draw us in so they could take Drago's remains, which Tyr had hidden on the Andromeda for some time now."

Whoa. "We have the Progenitor onboard?" Harper just about squeaked.

"Yep."

"And the Drago-jerkoffs knew that we had their much-treasured bones and they want them back but kept trying to obliterate the ship anyway?"

"Yep."

"I guess they breed 'em big and dumb over there."

"That's the impression I keep getting."

Oh. Damn. "Dylan, I forgot about you."

"Hunh?"

"You just gave me the most incredible blowjob of my life, and I didn't even offer to do anything in return. I think you sucked my brains out."

Dylan kissed him deeply, letting Harper taste himself on his tongue. "Anything coming back to you?"

Harper snorted. "No. And I'm sorry."

"You're less observant after sex too. I stroked myself off while I did you." Dylan's pants were still open, his spent cock framed by its fly. Mmm. "I couldn't possibly hold back while I had you moaning, writhing, and squealing from what I was doing to you."

"Squealing? Like hell!"

"Keep thinking that if it makes you feel better."

Eek. Squealing. Embarrassing. "You said something about assuring Tyr's loyalties?"

Dylan smiled darkly again. "He endangered the whole ship by stealing those remains and keeping them here. Seeing as how they're so important, I increased security on them, upgrading the locks and clearances."

"Wait a minute. You made it so he couldn't get at them either?" Oh, that was evil. Harper loved it.

"If he abandons us, he'll have to abandon the Progenitor's remains too."

"Smart." Harper just barely covered a yawn that snuck up on him. "Sorry. How did things go down on the planet?"

"We had a few chancy moments, but otherwise it went smoothly." Dylan kissed him. "Bed, Harper."

"Oh, _yeah_." Even as tired and already taken care of as he was, he felt a twitch of interest.

Dylan sounded amused. "_Sleep_, Harper."

"You're the tease who kissed me. Mixed messages cut like a knife."

"Uh-hunh."

"Getting off the floor would be good, though. My ass is going numb."

"We wouldn't want that."

"That's for damned sure. Just sleep?"

"Just sleep."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Harper stood, ruffled Dylan's hair, walked to the bed, stripped down, then slid naked under the covers. And waited for Dylan to say something.

"Just sleep."

There you go. "I know. But Trance says I should try to be more optimistic."

"I see."

"Good."

Dylan stripped naked, always a worthwhile show, too and slid in next to him. Cozy. All the warmth here made Harper feel drowsier. Dylan traced a circle on Harper's left arm. _That_ circle, the yin/yang symbol. "I've been wondering about this," Dylan said.

"You've been wondering about my left arm?"

"No, wise-ass." Dylan grinned. "Your tattoo. I know what the symbol means, but I wondered what it meant to you that you got it. And I want you to tell me even if you think it's too depressing for me."

"Yes, sir."

"Harper."

"You _used_ to have a sense of humor.... Well, I had so many marks on my skin that I had no choice over," scars, brands, "that I wanted something I picked for myself. Something that stood out better than the rest of the marks. This just seemed to be me, all the parts of me--light and dark, passive and aggressive--"

"I'm pretty sure that's passive and active."

"You know me. You're saying you don't think I can be passive-aggressive?"

"Your point."

"Thank you. Positive and negative, hot and cold--all of them tangled, inseparable, and necessary together. They all make me up." Harper snuggled in closer and smirked. "Deep, huh?"

"Very. I'm much more shallow."

"Well, it's not _that_ deep." Harper yawned.

"Good night, Harper."

"Yeah, yeah."

  


* * *

As Tyr crawled into the access tube, Harper greeted him with a smile and "Have a good time coming in?"

"I see that your diminutive size is an advantage here."

"Here and elsewhere and in ways you're too narrow-minded to ever get to see." They could trade insults forever, but.... "Okay, you're here for a reason. You have anything you want to tell me about what really went down on the planet with you and Dylan against the Drago-Kazov?"

To Harper's amusement, Tyr had to sit crunched up. Watching Dylan and Tyr try to make themselves comfortable in the small access tunnels always gave him a mean thrill. A small, mean thrill.

Tyr moved his head to shift his locks away from his face. "Our captain showed a recklessness in approaching and entering the base that I found discomforting."

"That's Dylan."

"He showed a greater recklessness than usual. He also cheerfully invoked 'una salus victus,' the one hope of the doomed."

"The one hope of the doomed?" That sounded just great.

"He claimed it to be an Argosy special ops motto, a slogan about not being invulnerable but being ready and not hoping for safety."

"Eeesh. But that's still Dylan."

"He also called down fire on our position via the missile batteries, telling the Drago-Kazov that he thought the base might withstand five or six hits before being reduced to rubble."

"It was his bargaining chip."

"He hit the base _four times_, and I can't help wondering if he would have drawn number five if the Drago-Kazov hadn't given in to his demands. He was laughing in a manner even you might find disturbing as he said that he couldn't wait to see what five felt like."

Damn. "They're Nietzscheans. He knew they'd fold if they figured he'd really kill them all." Harper had some idea of the terror Tyr must have felt while backing up a man who seemed to be trying to get him killed. Endangering his own life that way went against every Nietzschean instinct.

If it hadn't been _Dylan_ doing it, Harper would have appreciated the _style_ involved in standing there, laughing nastily, as the Drago-Kazov waited in terror for the next hit and the next. But it _was_ Dylan, and Harper didn't know how much of Dylan's planning came from a background of High Guard special ops gamesmanship and how much from teetering on the edge of sanity.

Harper colored himself officially worried about Dylan. They'd have to keep an even closer watch, though he had no idea how much good _he'd_ be, since he barely left the ship anymore.

"I'm not so certain," Tyr said. "And now they know how far he'll go, and that makes him vulnerable."

Oh, please. "Yeah, they know how far he'll go. They know he'll go all the way, farther than they would. That makes him _strong_; it makes _us_ strong."

"Yet Earth remains under Nietzschean control."

Harper snarled, "Someday, they'll push us too far, leave us with _nothing_ left to live for, and then they'll learn how fucking scary kludges who are willing to die to accomplish their goals can be."

Tyr stared back. "I would feel far more comforted by your reading of his actions and the Drago-Kazov reaction to them if you weren't involved in sexual relations with him."

Son of a bitch. "I know about Drago's bones and how Dylan maneuvered them out of your hands, and I approve of what he did. You put a big, flashing target on our back without even telling us. So I know you have even more of an agenda regarding Dylan than usual, and it would be useless for you to try to talk me into getting you around the new security."

Tyr moved closer. "Ah."

"Yeah, 'ah.'" Harper became more cautious, but he knew these tunnels and navigated them at high speed almost every day. He could outrun and outplay Tyr here.

"I suspected that you'd feel that way. However, I ask you to consider something. The captain said that everything on this ship belongs to him." Although Harper tried to hide his visceral reaction to that, it must have shown, because Tyr said, "I reacted similarly. 'I do not belong to you,' I told him. He told me that I was always welcome to leave, thus implying that I do, indeed, belong to him as long as I remain with this ship. Are you his property, boy?"

"I'm nobody's property."

Tyr had his own, well-known interests and would spin the facts and lie to achieve what he wanted. Harper kept that knowledge firmly in mind. Tyr was most dangerous when he didn't seem to have an angle he was working, while Harper knew Tyr's current angle.

"Do you belong to him?"

"In some ways, but not the way you mean."

"Your mind remains your own?" Tyr sounded interested.

"Always."

Tyr put his hand on the side of Harper's face before Harper could move away. The rough fingertips gently stroking his cheek made him shiver. Tyr said, "That's good to know."

It was just Tyr trying to score points against Dylan again. It was just Tyr trying to score.... "I'm not as easy as you think I am."

Tyr laughed, let his face go with one last caress, and crawled away.

What the fuck was that?

  


* * *

Dylan's face, already down-looking, fell further as he walked into his quarters and looked at Harper, sitting on his bed. "You don't approve either."

Harper hadn't approved of anything since Dylan had decided to visit this stupid-ass remnant of the Commonwealth preserved by Dylan's lost fiancée. Amazing how a woman who'd been dead for a few centuries kept popping up in the here and now to twist Dylan into a knot from beyond the grave. Shove the knife in again, Sara. Harder this time, and give it a little twist. She was a damned tease, and so was her piece of the Commonwealth. It pissed Harper off.

But that wasn't the thing Dylan meant. Dylan meant the thing that Dylan had done, all by his lonesome, knowing they wouldn't agree with it if he told them. Beka had been beside herself, and Tyr quietly but savagely disgusted. "None of us approve. None of us. I know I didn't want you to lose that idealism but this had to be the worst time to use it. Though I'm sure the fact that the guy in question looks exactly like the best friend who betrayed you 300 years ago has nothing to do with you refusing to keep Rekel's frame-up in place."

The funny thing was that he wasn't even all that angry at Dylan. How could you blame Dylan for being Dylan? No, Harper reserved the brunt of his rage for the people who deserved it. As if they cared how he felt.

"Telemachus Rhade is innocent."

But Harper still had to let Dylan know why the crew thought he'd made a bad decision here. Hell, he probably knew why, but Harper had to tell him anyway. "Yeah, one innocent guy only going to prison versus the safety of thousands of worlds Tarazed's fleet could have helped us protect against the Magog. One innocent guy who's leader of the party that sees no problem with keeping the planet's head stuck in the sand. What do they care if other people on thousands of other planets are dying while their powerful fleet sits in mothballs at home? What do they care as long as they're comfortable and safe?"

"They've faced some attacks from other--"

Harper had to interrupt. Had to. "Yeah, a few attacks once in a while from a race that _doesn't_ eat or rape everyone in sight like a certain race we know of does. Boo-fucking-hoo. No excuse. They have the manpower and weaponry to protect themselves _and_ help us against the Magog. They were hidden here 300 years ago specifically to help you out when you arrived, but they're too self-satisfied to do that. God, I hope I'm still around when the Magog come to tear their hearts out." He should have known they'd vote that way; he should have stuffed the ballot boxes like he'd wanted to. Should have seen it. You could only trust people to act in their best interests, and then _only as they saw them_. Some people wouldn't know their real best interest if it ripped out their throats.

Dylan looked taken aback by Harper's rage. "Perhaps you'd care to explain that, Harper?"

Harper had been restraining himself for such a long time, that this time the words ripped loose, though they probably sounded deadly quiet to Dylan. "I'm from Earth, Dylan. Everybody feels so _sorry_ for Earth.... Okay, maybe the Magog and Nietzscheans don't, but everybody else claims to. Poor Earth, favored hunting spot of the Magog even as it's ground under the iron fist of the ruling Nietzscheans invaders. It's all such a fucking shame. Do you know how people choose to help poor, old Earth?"

"No," Dylan said quietly. Harper couldn't read the blank mask of his face and eyes.

Harper's smile came out dark and sharp. Bitter. "Some of them send little relief missions with some food and lots of priests. Some of them. We like the food, it sure beats starving, but what a lot of us really would like would be somebody to help us get our freedom again. Give us the breathing room to pull ourselves back up, maybe even be masters of our own fucking homeworld again. But nobody wants to help like that. They're comfortable. They don't want to risk lives or money or munitions or anything on a bunch of strangers on another world who never did anything for them.

"That's why I'm such an ungrateful little bastard. After the wolf has so pulverized your little house that you're living like a rat in a hole in the ground, when the wolf turns on the other little piggies' houses the only thing you feel like doing is laughing. Not that you have the resources to help the people who ignored _your_ trouble anyway, but you get such a dark thrill of satisfaction when their turn comes.

"Telemachus Rhade is Nietzschean. He may be innocent of sending those fake Magog ships out, but I'm sure he's done _something_ deserving a prison sentence. He'd even understand why you let him hang and wouldn't think any less of you for it."

"He said he'd understand," Dylan said, as quietly as he'd said his last thing, as if he were trying to talk to Harper from another room.

"There you go. But it's a little too late to reframe Rhade and recast the votes, so I guess I'll have to content myself with the thought of the Magog ripping through his bit of the Commonwealth and the Tarazed people screaming for help that won't be coming." But what good would it do? They wouldn't learn until too late. They never did. God, he didn't know if the emotion he felt was hate or despair or some bastard child of the two, but whatever it was felt like it would eat through his stomach and skin like acid.

Useless. It wasn't any good. He stood, barely aware of Dylan as anything more than a blue-black shadow at the edge of his vision. "Dylan, I'm not good company right now. I... I have to go."

But he sort of docked with Dylan on the way out, so gently that he couldn't quite say that Dylan had grabbed him. Dylan held him, but he couldn't quite feel it. "I did what I thought was best," Dylan said. "I can't do anything about it now. Not about Tarazed... and not about Earth. I wish I could."

Harper buried his face and fists in blue-black cloth, then let go and pushed away. He felt quiet. "It's too late for a lot of things. Good night, Dylan."

Somehow he ended up in the hall headed for his quarters without any memory of leaving Dylan. Tyr approached from the other direction. "I assume that you spoke with our captain about his latest foolhardy act," Tyr said.

Harper felt so tired. Too tired for Nietzscheans. But he tried to put on his usual mask and light voice anyway. "If he didn't know it was bone-headed before, he sure does now. For all the good it does."

Tyr waited for him and changed course to walk with him. "You would have left the framing in place."

"Hell, I might have fiddled with things to perfect it. Just to make sure."

Tyr put his hand on Harper's shoulder and squeezed, an unspoken "that's my boy!" Which Harper wasn't, and didn't want, but he didn't shake free of that hand for reasons he couldn't explain to himself. Maybe it was that he needed to have proof this very second that someone approved his reasoning on the topic, even if it was a Nietzschean, because he got the definite feeling that the main idea Dylan had been left with was pity that Harper had been so twisted by his life. And Dylan's opinion had a lot more weight than it should.

Harper wasn't wrong here. He knew he wasn't. But he felt so tired....

Tyr drew him in closer, so they were walking with Harper leaning a little against his side. "Your opinion has more weight with him than you realize. You may have done some good."

"Yeah, sure."

"We'll keep a closer eye on him."

Harper just had to laugh at that one. "I think he'll get suspicious if you start following him into the can."

"Whatever works."

Harper shook his head as he opened the door to his quarters. "You just can't leave me until you've left me with disturbing images first. Goodbye, Tyr."

Harper hit his hips on a few things as he wandered through the dark to his bed, then stripped down to something more comfortable and curled up under his sheets. Unfortunately, sleep wouldn't come.

Dylan had been willing to sacrifice him, Rev, and Tyr to save a planet of people. Harper understood that. Harper had made that kind of decision recently--only with Beka on one side and 31 million people and a relief convoy on the other and then with himself, Trance, and the Andromeda Ascendant on one side and 31 million people and a relief convoy on the other --so he knew how hard that could be. But he couldn't deal with the idea that after all of this Dylan had weighed Telemachus Rhade's _freedom_\--not even the guy's life, just his freedom--as being more important than the rest of the universe.

  


* * *

Without Dylan around to linger over bed, a shower, or breakfast with, Harper just showered, dressed, took a hit of serum, shoved some food and coffee into his mouth, and went off to work. Seeing as how they'd somehow avoided having people shooting at them since the fight with the Drago-Kazov, neither the Andromeda nor the Maru had any pressing battle damage, so Harper decided to build nova bombs and work on the swarm ship today.

After a few hours, Dylan walked in. "Do you have a moment?"

"Sure. I was about to switch off to something else soon anyway, since bomb-building gets monotonous."

"I wanted to talk about last night."

Which was cool, since it saved Harper the effort of looking for him for just that purpose once the shift was done. "I want you to know that I didn't leave your quarters as a kind of punishment thing, I just had to get away for a bit. I was mad more at the universe than at you, since it was too late to fix things."

Dylan sighed. "I want to make things right for you, but I don't know how."

"Nobody does." Harper shrugged. "I don't."

"I'm the captain. I will make unilateral decisions at times."

"I'm loud-mouthed and opinionated. I don't see that changing either."

Dylan's mouth twitched. "I want to see you tonight. Will I get to?"

"Yeah." Avoiding Dylan didn't do anybody, especially not Dylan, any good. "If I don't spend time with you, I'll never succeed in bending you to my will."

"Very funny."

"Mmm-hmm."

"You're not smiling."

"Oh, I'm joking, Dylan." Harper put a big, evil smile on his face. "Mostly."

  


* * *

Bored. So bored. Harper figured that he'd get in a lot less trouble at these diplomatic functions if he had something to do other than drink and make trouble. Yet Dylan wanted him to at least put an appearance in for a while and be available for some unnamed thing or other.

The mutual defense pact was a great idea, the next best thing to establishing a Commonwealth, even if trying to talk the Castalians around on it might drive Beka insane. Dumb fish people. Dumb fish people who couldn't defend themselves, let alone help defend anybody else, but Dylan wanted them in.

Harper was bored. So bored.

Then he saw the woman with the glowing attachment sticking out of her data port. He didn't see many ports as it was, let alone whatever she was running out of it. Wonder what the glow stick attachment did.... One easy way to find out. Time to make with the harmless lech routine.

Like that was a hardship. She was one fine-looking woman and, from the outfit she almost wore, not shy about letting everyone see for themselves. He cruised up, let her notice him, smiled, and delivered his starting shot: "Is that a data port in your neck, or are you happy to see me?"

  


* * *

Back in his quarters, scans showed that the 13 spawn were doing just fine, having sucked up everything he'd downed at the party. Damned larvae, sleeping snug and cozy within the clutch of his body, dreaming their sweet, boozy dreams. His own happy little family of functional alcoholics.

Rommie just had to chase away his one source of entertainment. It would have given him a warm feeling if he could think that she'd been concerned for his safety, but it felt more like she worried that he'd stupidly spill everything he knew about the Andromeda Ascendant and her crew to Satrina. As if. Anybody who pronounced "archivist" two different ways within two minutes couldn't possibly be one, and he wouldn't reveal a damn thing to somebody who actually _was_ from the FTA Information Directory anyway. If Rommie hadn't so rudely interrupted, Harper could have played with Satrina for a while, talking a mile a minute and revealing nothing of any importance, and maybe found out what that glow stick in her port did. He seriously doubted that it just kept data and enhanced acoustics.

The door started chiming and wouldn't stop. Who the hell? Everybody should still be at the party. Unable to find his pants and unwilling to parade about in public in his boxers, he wrapped a blanket around his waist, ricocheted off the edge of a table, and careened toward the door. When it opened, he found himself nearly eye to nipple with a nicely displayed pair of breasts. Being short had its advantages in scenery sometimes.

"Uh, Satrina." Okay, what was she doing here? How did she find him? Harper smiled at her and hoped his incomprehension didn't show on his face.

She walked right in. "I was hoping we could start our interview." And grabbed his blanket at the waist, dragging him behind her.

"Uhm, n-now?" He was stuttering with surprise. Not good. Words, don't fail him now. "Okay, w-what would you like to know?" Good going, words.

"Question one," she started, then yanked the blanket away, grabbed his face, and started the kissing.

A lot of kissing, of the open-mouthed, nasty, hungry variety. He was human, and he had a woman writhing against him, so he kissed back. Though she had her hands at his jaw in a way that reminded him of somebody setting his head in the perfect starting position to snap his neck. She smelled good... but a little strange. Something....

Okay, what was wrong with this picture? How about everything? How about how he wasn't getting an honest lust vibe off this woman?

Needing space to think, he pushed her back to arm's length, then chose his words carefully. "Uhm, I can't believe I'm doing this but, uh, there's something I gotta tell you. I'm infested with Magog larvae." That never got any easier to say.

"Ohh," she cooed, exaggerated "poor baby" style, as she kept stroking his jaw, not letting go.

As reactions went, that coo annoyed the hell out of him and made him feel even better about telling her to get lost. "Yeah. I'm taking medication to keep them dormant. Who knows how long that'll last. For all I know--"

She put a shushing finger on his lip. "That's horrible," she cooed. He wanted to kick her. "I bet you'd do anything to get rid of them."

Duh, lady. "Anything."

She smiled. "I'm so glad you said that." Satrina put her hand on his stomach, then pushed it _through_ his stomach. Her hand just phased right into his belly.

It felt so fucking _weird_ having her not-solid hand inside there, a shuddery, not-feeling of almost-pain, almost-pleasure. He just barely held back a whimper.

Her hand came back out, to his overwhelming relief, and held something that looked like an albino tangerine slice. She said, "That's one," and crushed it.

That's... that's one? One of the spawn. She just grabbed and removed it, without it lashing out at his insides or poisoning him. A moment ago he'd had 13 spawn and now he had 12. No fuss, no muss. For real? He should feel different or something.

Dropping the supposedly sexy voice she'd been putting on, Satrina said, "Let's keep this simple."

"How did you do that?" He _so_ wanted to know.

Next thing he knew, she was pushing him down onto the bed and straddling him, her hand pressing down on his neck just above his collarbone. "Stay," that hand said, like he was a dog.

Her hand moved from his neck to his chest, still maintaining pressure. "You once had possession of a special library collection from the All Systems University. Give it to me, and I'll take all the eggs out of you."

Of course, she wanted something from him, and as usual it wasn't his sweet ass. However, this hadn't been what he would have expected in a million years. The archive. Somehow he'd made himself forget where he'd hidden it, for his own protection, so she couldn't get it out of him this way. It's not like he had it inside him, the way he had when Jeger had--

The phasing, the demand for the archive.... "You wouldn't happen to know a big bounty hunter guy name of Jeger, works for this red, glowing-eyed shadowy dude, you know, enemy of life as we know it--"

She looked amused and contemptuous. Yeah, that was always attractive. "Shh. My interview, remember? I ask the questions. Now do you want the eggs out or not?"

Oh, yeah, honey. Let him up and he'd go get the archive right now. Why wouldn't he give a treasure chest of knowledge over to a creature that ran the Magog, directed their slaughter, and did genocide as a hobby?

He'd rather die first.

He would die, actually. Thanks for reminding him. "You better go." He started to push himself up.

Her hand went right to his neck and pressed him back down hard. Only thing harder than the pressure she put in that hand was her voice. "Just like that you're telling me to leave and let those Magog babies claw out of your belly." She smiled and sounded more genuinely turned on than she had before. "Cutting you. Eating their way free...."

Like he needed to be reminded of all his worst imaginings too. "Okay, okay, okay. Spare me the visuals. Let me guess: if I don't do an errand for Ol' Red Eyes, it's a slow agonizing death for me, right?" He only had to cooperate with the creature that had helped put the damned spawn in him to begin with, turning traitor to sentient life everywhere while he was at it.

She nodded, a big smug smile on her face, and wiggled a bit, increasing his resentful arousal. Sometimes being human really sucked.

"You know, for someone so hot, you're a real charmer," he said.

"I'm offering you a happy ending, Seamus. I'd take it if I were you." She got off and walked away, letting herself out.

Harper took a deep breath. If he played along, she would cheat him. Of course she would. But who knew how much he could get out of her? He could cheat right back. He already had one less monster baby in his gut. If he played his cards right....

But he needed the archive to play. Since he couldn't remember where he put it, he needed Trance's special talents.

  


* * *

But Trance wouldn't play along and wouldn't tell him why she wouldn't play along. It pissed him off. If she saw danger in it, he'd be better armed against it if he knew what that danger was, dammit.

Fortunate for him that he worked well on his own.

Harper went still and quiet in the access tube as Dylan walked a tour group near it, saying, "...and in case of an emergency, the ship can be piloted from the gunnery nose."

"Emergency?" someone purred. "You mean in the event that the command deck crew is reduced to a fine red mist and splattered across the walls in a bloody mural."

This member of the command deck crew took talk like that pretty personally.

"That would qualify, yes." Dylan's voice sounded light, if taken aback. He probably had that cute look on his face too. Well, one of his cute looks.

The Perseid, sounding chipper, asked if that kind of thing happened with any frequency or if it was a rare occurrence. Freaky-ass people, Perseids.

Uh-oh. Harper could tell without looking that Dylan had noticed him. He felt Dylan's attention and approach.

"Not as rare as I would like." Dylan stopped right in front of the opening, leaned against the wall, did his exaggeratedly casual manner, and said, "Hello, Mr. Harper. Anything I need to know?"

Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Dylan knew him. He had to stop letting people do that.

Harper looked at Dylan and smiled. At least he hoped it looked like a smile, but it probably looked more like he'd been caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. "Not a thing. You're the captain. All-seeing, all-knowing." All-intimidating, all-cool-stealing, all-messing him up, all-wanting him to spill.... "'Bye!" Harper tucked his gear into his belt and raced up the ladder just until he was out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, he hoped.

"Excitable little fellow, isn't he?" the "fine red mist" guy purred. Had to be the Nietzschean leader.

"Yes he is," Dylan answered in his wondering voice. Dylan was going to pin him later for sure. "And we are walking."

Once they left, Harper slid back down the ladder. He'd put the archive or at least a hint to himself of its location somewhere. Had to have.

  


* * *

Harper sat on the floor of his quarters alone and just... thought for a while. He had work he could be doing, but his brain kept zinging around too fast to be useful. Excess adrenaline, maybe. Getting your heart's desire dangled in front of you, having seven monster babies removed from your gut, being jerked around, attaining god-like power, nearly losing your soul, willingly giving up god-like power, and saving the ship could do that to you.

The door chimed. Time to pay the piper. "C'mon in, Dylan."

The door opened, letting in a stab of light, then closed. "Is there a reason why you're sitting in the dark, Harper?"

"I have a little light down here."

Dylan maneuvered through the mess and sat down beside him, though not close enough to touch. "What's that smell?"

"Char. When I overloaded Satrina's ship o' evil, it blew a few things out in here with it."

"I imagine that overloading her ship o' evil also stopped the assassins."

"In their tracks, yeah."

Dylan nodded, then asked, "Harper, what the hell were you into?"

Harper sighed. "You met Satrina?"

"We met. She propositioned me." Had Dylan said that to be cruel? Hell, right now Harper couldn't tell.

"Great. She was displaying her wares on every street corner."

"She propositioned you?" How scary was it that Dylan could correctly translate what he'd just said?

"Don't sound _so_ shocked. She did plenty of kissing and a bit of straddling. I tied her to my bed."

"Why do you have straps for your bed?"

"That's not important. The important thing is that I had something her boss, the evil Magog entity, wanted. The All Systems University Library archive. If I gave it to her, she'd take all the Magog larvae out of me."

Dylan went utterly still. "Did she?"

"Seven. She took out seven. I did a scan afterward to make sure, and it turns out that she really did do it." Harper gasped as Dylan pulled him in for a tight hug, then closed his eyes and shuddered into relaxation. It shouldn't feel this good. "Seven down, and only Stinky, Dopey, Skanky, Grumpy, Curly, and Turdbrain left to go." It still gave him a thrill to remember her crushing those pale larvae in front of his eyes. He still had a death sentence waiting in his gut, but six flesh-eating monster babies seemed more manageable than 13. God, his life was fucked up.

"You named them?" Dylan asked, his voice breaking a little.

"I named all of them. I have conversations with them."

"God."

"I didn't give her the archive. I dangled the real one in front of her but gave her a virus file that recorded what parts of the archive she wanted to look at."

"I didn't think you had given her the archive."

Smiling, Harper clutched him tighter. "Thanks."

"I wondered what the hell you were doing with the Maru, but ultimately I trust you."

Which made Harper feel awful. "I almost betrayed everybody. I stole her gadget to phase-shift myself, and the feeling of power was.... I could do anything. For a little while I felt like a god, Dylan, and nothing and nobody else seemed important. And I could hear the Entity talking to me. It knows my _name_...."

This time, Dylan tightened his grip. "But you didn't."

"I didn't. It wanted me to work for it. It offered me so much power and told me that I'd never have to feel helpless or afraid again, but you know what? Being Death's lapdog is one of the most limiting lives I can imagine for myself."

"You sabotaged Satrina and her assassins."

"She had a swarm ship phase-shifted and clamped down on our hull. I overloaded her ship, which blew out the phase-shifting implants. End of fight. But she faked me out and phased away even without hers."

"She'll be back."

"I knew you'd say that. Anyway, I decided to stop whining and waiting for somebody to save me and start looking for my own cure."

"Isn't Trance doing that?"

Harper's brain went weird. "Yeah, and she's our medical officer. But.... It's funny, but when I told her that I intended to start looking into it myself, she said, 'Sounds complicated. When do we start?'"

"When do we _start_?" Dylan sounded livid, and his stroking hand on Harper's back became more vehement. "She was supposed to have been working on it since we got you back from the Worldship. That's what she said she was doing. It wasn't unreasonable for you to trust a medical officer who promised to hunt for a cure for you to actually do as she promised. You have no medical background, so it wasn't a matter of you slacking off."

"Yeah. I guess. She... threatened me before that. Told me not to look at the archive. And later... later I just gave it to her."

"Gave what to her?"

Harper's stomach started to hurt. "The archive. After all her attempts to block me and her threats and everything, I just gave her the archive, and I don't even know why I did that. I mean, that was _stupid_. Why did I do that?"

"Harper, I haven't trusted her for a while. I've had some doubts about her ever since she accidentally brought us back in time to a pivotal moment in the Battle of Witchhead Nebula, but my suspicions have grown lately. When she returned from Inari with a ridiculous story about them just talking to her, I let it go and didn't bother to tell her that we'd been told that they blamed their civil war on a purple being who could be one of her people and admitted that they took her to torture her. She didn't volunteer any information about that purple being herself either."

"There are secrets about her in that archive that she doesn't want anyone knowing." That she wasn't comfortable with him already knowing, like the bit about that ancient civilization worshipping a goddess that looked like her. The thought that she might be that _old_ freaked him out. Damn, when her answer to him saying, "God hates me" was "don't take it personally"....

Was her refusal to help remove the spawn a can't or won't thing?

"I wish you could have trusted me with these events back at a time when I might have been able to help you." Dylan sounded hurt. "And I can't believe you suggested that I wouldn't notice you were gone or miss you."

In his parting message from the Maru. Harper couldn't let Dylan stay hurt. "Every time something really big came up and I brought someone in on it, that someone betrayed me or did something that screwed it up for me. I have reasons why I don't trust easily. It's not you, it's me. Besides, I sure couldn't tell you in front of the tour group, so I would have been forced to track you down sometime while you were alone, which was close to never during this diplomatic thing. I didn't feel like I had that much time. Satrina offered to get the spawn out, Dylan. I couldn't take the thought of anything messing that up. I didn't really want Trance to get involved either." Harper sighed. "The whole situation just brought me back to an old, bad mental space."

Dylan seemed to be soothed a little. "And look what trusting Trance led to. I want to call her on her supposed research into a cure for you." Okay, he was soothed on Harper's behalf but deeply pissed at Trance.

It gave Harper a warm feeling, but he had to rain on Dylan's parade anyway. "You think she doesn't have cover files ready if you did?"

"Yeah. Damn. I'm sorry." Dylan tenderly kissed his forehead.

It felt so good, being in Dylan's arms, being kissed, being seven spawn lighter. Harper kissed him on the mouth, hungrily, and felt Dylan respond similarly. He squirmed atop Dylan's growing erection and sighed at the fingers stroking through his hair. Dylan didn't kiss anything like Satrina, thank God.

"Am I better than Satrina?" Dylan asked.

Harper coughed. "Oh yeah. I'd give her kisses a 5 out of 10. They were presumptuous, dull, and earthy. No bouquet. I assume you turned her down too."

"She too obviously wasn't into it. I prefer at least the pretense that my partner is actually interested in me."

"She really was a crappy actor. And you should have heard her say 'carrot.' Awful."

"Why was she saying 'carrot'?"

"Long story. Dull story. Kiss me more. Have I told you that I love your new dress uniform?" Harper asked as he undid the snaps on the jacket.

"Anything would be better than the white."

"True, but the new one is still so stylish."

"I smell char near your data port," Dylan said as he licked circles on the skin around it.

Between shudders, Harper said, "I had some spark problems." When Dylan stilled, Harper cupped his ass and answered, "I'm fine. I just have to spark-proof the damned thing. Too many artificial constructs keep throwing me out of the matrix."

"Rommie threw you out again?"

"Actually, a program I created while I had the archive jammed in my head did it this time. The simulacrum was like me to the infinite power while mainlining Sparky Cola. You should have seen the hair I gave it...."

"I'll have to meet it."

That surprised a giggle out of Harper. "Sorry. I had a mental image. And it better keep its hands to itself."

"Speaking of people keeping their hands to themselves.... You said that she straddled you. Where?"

"My waist."

"Harper."

"The bed."

Impossibly fast, Dylan picked him up, set him on the bed, and straddled Harper, sitting back on his heels so his full weight wouldn't come down. "Like this?" Looking down, Dylan's hair and open jacket hung down a bit, giving Harper the insane urge to bat at the pretty danglies. He especially loved the shiny snaps on the jacket.

A little breathless, Harper answered, "Not quite. She put her hand on my neck just above my collarbone." Dylan sitting up there, rubbing back now and then, had the expected result on his cock.

"On your _neck_?"

"She didn't want me to go anywhere while she was talking. She's a bit lighter than you are too. What _are_ you doing? Not that I _mind_...."

Dylan stroked him up and down in a line, from neck to belly. "I don't like the idea of you lying in bed thinking of her, so I'm overwriting the memory."

"You look a lot prettier sitting up there than she did."

"Thank you. Did she strip for you?" Dylan took off his jacket and tossed it to the side somewhere.

"Nope, but she didn't have much on to begin with. You're going to have to work harder."

Dylan pulled his shirt off over his head and disposed of it similarly. "She was a cheat."

Harper looked up happily, enjoying the show. "No kidding."

"Help me here. Take off my holsters."

"Yes, sir." Harper stroked Dylan's erection and inner thighs a little more--okay, a lot more--than he had to while doing it, not that Dylan complained, but eventually he had the belts unbuckled and off.

Dylan unstraddled Harper, to Harper's very vocal complaints, to unfasten his boots and take them off. "You could take this opportunity to strip, Harper."

Harper continued lying back, utterly at ease, with his head pillowed on his arms. "I'm taking in a show." At Dylan's raised eyebrow and exaggerated stern look, Harper wiggled his bare toes and said, "I'm not wearing as much as you are." Just pants, boxers, nebulizer, and a tank top.

Dylan pounced, leaning over fast to unfasten Harper's pants and pull them off, then grabbed the boxers and yanked them off too. Surprised, Harper didn't know whether to protest or cheer Dylan on. His cock, already hard, twitched into further hardness, registering its vote as "cheering him on."

Dylan said, "Now, while I take my pants off, you can take your shirt off."

"You are not my captain in bed." He wouldn't do it just because Dylan told him to. Even if he did feel silly wearing just his shirt.

"I want you to consider your best interests." Dylan unfastened his pants and put his hand in, stroking. Eyes closed, he sat there and enjoyed himself, ignoring Harper.

Damn, he looked hot. "Taking the shirt off, sir." Harper whisked it and the nebulizer right off.

Dylan smiled and stripped out of his remaining clothing. Harper grabbed him and resumed the kissing and stroking. And full-body rubbing. Harper didn't want to insult the rubbing by failing to mention it.

They wrestled a bit, prompting Harper to say, "She definitely didn't do this."

"See, I'm getting further ahead all the time."

"Work harder."

When Dylan flipped Harper onto his belly, leaving him unable to see what was going on, his heart skipped a beat or two. His back must have tensed too, because Dylan asked, "Harper?"

Harper kept his voice as light as possible. "Sorry. Trust issues. I have lots of 'em, remember?"

"That's fine. I want you to tell me these things. If I do anything you don't like or if you want me to stop, let me know."

"I keep wondering about this shrinking violet guy you mention once in a while who must look a lot like me. The one who _doesn't_ talk. I want to meet him."

"Should I turn you back over?"

Harper could feel his shoulder muscles twitch at the feeling of vulnerability, and Dylan probably saw that, but he said, "I wanna see what you want to do."

"You can tell me to stop at any time."

"Don't worry about me."

Dylan's plans started with kissing a path down Harper's spine, with the air now giving cool shocks against his damp skin. It felt good and terrifying all at once because he knew where Dylan had to be heading with this. He wanted it so bad, but the nightmare fragments kept getting in the way. Living things shoved inside his body, lodged for a while, then tearing him apart on their way out. Overwrite. Overwrite, overwrite, overwrite, please....

Dylan stroked comforting circles into his skin. "I'm sorry. I'll stop."

"No. I can do this. I want to do this." Even if his body did feel like a clenched fist, his muscles so tight he might snap.

"Not if I have to hurt you doing it."

"If I can't relax by then, we won't."

"Okay," Dylan murmured into the base of his spine, the vibration sending sparks through him.

When a sudden shock of pleasure shot up from his ass, up his back, and radiated out, instinct made him spread his legs more in response. It kept coming in waves. Oh God. Dylan was rimming him. Very thoroughly, in wet, hard, stroking circles. On and on and on.

Whimpering, nearly mindless, Harper humped the mattress and pushed back on Dylan's tongue, wanting more. It kept going on for an eternity, lighting up his nervous system. The drive to come became more and more urgent, but he couldn't get enough of the right friction against the mattress. "Dylan, please," Harper moaned.

"Are you relaxed enough yet?" Dylan sounded very smug.

"I'm... a puddle about to slide off onto the floor, okay?"

But when Harper felt pressure and a slight burn in his ass, his whole body clenched up. Dylan made an abrupt sound and murmured, "Easy. Easy...." while stroking the small of his back.

"Sorry." Harper concentrated on relaxing, on sliding back into the buzzed state Dylan had tongued him into. Then Dylan stroked his sweet spot while still rubbing his back, "Easy, easy...." and relaxing became a lot easier. Nothing beat having direct confirmation that all the good stuff still worked....

Just about purring, looser, Harper pushed back to get more, working with Dylan's thrusts, sliding slickly against his mattress. On the next slide, Dylan must have added another finger from the change in size but at this point Harper didn't feel any discomfort anymore. Exactly the opposite.

"Ready?" Dylan sounded a bit strained.

"You okay?" Harper gasped.

"Watching you, I'm having trouble holding back."

That had to be the sexiest thing Harper had heard in a while. "I'm ready."

He couldn't help making a disappointed sound as the fingers slid out, but then he felt the comforting heat of Dylan's body against his skin right before Dylan started to slowly press in. Oh. Much, much bigger.... Dylan held him by the hips, positioning him, and continued the caressing circles with his fingers as he slid in by slow, careful degrees. Harper felt a few moments of heart-pounding panic but this was so obviously Dylan holding him, inside him, murmuring to him, that he fought it down and breathed until the panic and discomfort turned to pleasure. "Easy, easy...." The next slide sent bright sparks through him as Dylan finally stopped his cautious upward advance, fully in from the feel of it. Dylan had his back covered....

"Okay?" Dylan gasped, then kissed his neck.

"Oh yeah. Yeah. God, will you move?"

Dylan started with short, rocking thrusts that made Harper whimper and worked up to longer, harder ones that coaxed entirely new sounds out of him. Not thinking, just feeling Dylan rubbing against him inside and out, he was in the moment, no bad dreams, no bad anything. It was Dylan, it stayed Dylan.... The moment he felt a very human grip on his cock, he shot off, shouting, seeing fireworks, with Dylan--heh--coming right behind him with a few more forceful strokes.

"Okay?" Dylan asked, laughter in his voice.

Shuddering, coming down, boneless, Harper answered, "I'm gonna hit you. _Yes_."

Harper's bed was narrower than Dylan's, so they had to crowd close to fit, not that Harper minded, once Dylan got down from on top of him. With the height difference, Dylan didn't so much settle next to him as curl around him. Cozy.

"You know," Harper said, "I still vaguely remember some babe coming in here and doing something to me on this bed. I think you're going to have to do some more things to me to finish overwriting that memory."

"Give me some recovery time first."

"Do I have to? No tickle, no tickle, you bastard!"

"You're so sensitive."

"There's something you're not usually complaining about."

"Do you have a blanket around here somewhere?"

"Yeah. Satrina threw it somewhere...." Harper's sentence trailed off under Dylan's hungry kiss. "I can get to like this. If I want action, all I have to do is mention the S word?"

"She manipulated and cheated you, so she's not on my list of favorite people."

"And we hate her boss."

"That too."

Seven spawn lighter, Harper put his hand on his belly and stroked small circles on it. It didn't feel any different. Dylan put his larger hand over Harper's and went along for the ride, and _that_ felt very different.

Change could be pretty damned good sometimes.

 

### End


End file.
